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| ★★★✰✰ |
Synopsis: Ever since her sister, Agnes, died, Pearl has a tradition every time it snows. She makes a person out of snow. A snow sister. It makes Christmas feel a little less lonely. On Christmas Eve, her father receives a letter about a long-lost relative's will. Is their luck about to change? In anticipation of a better Christmas, Pearl goes to beg credit at Mr Noble's grocery to get ingredients for a Christmas pudding. But she is refused, and chased down the street where she is hit by a hansom cab. The snow is falling so hard that they can't take her home. She'll have to stay at Flintfield Manor overnight, in a haunted room... Will Pearl make it home for Christmas?
***
Review: This short little novella, while not actually about Christmas itself, is a great story for kids set during Victorian times about the kinds of values that are most important during the festive season - being with family and grateful for what you have, not longing for things you don't really need.
I wasn't personally overly gone on the story; I'm perhaps too much of an adult with financial responsibilities to really believe that being destitute is fine so long as you have family. But I, alas, am cynical. Despite that, I can see how the moral of this story is an important and valuable one for children to be exposed to in the context of modern consumerist society, and as such I do think it's a good one for kids.
As per her longer novels, it's a well-paced, fairly engaging and easy read with some beautiful illustrations, which really added to it. All the same, my grown-up-ness got the better of me, and I just didn't enjoy it all that much.
Rating: 3/5
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