Amelia Bedelia Wraps It Up

Amelia Bedelia Wraps It Up is Herman Parish's Christmas one, a chapter book for 6 year olds where nearly every joke comes from taking a grown up at their word.

What happens

It opens in the attic with the decoration boxes coming down. Amelia Bedelia is carrying a stack of them when she sneezes, and her mother asks if she's catching a cold. No, says Amelia Bedelia, her hands are full, so she can't catch anything.

That is the machine the whole book runs on. Her father wants to trim the tree and she offers to shorten it. Her mother has bought antique trimmings at a flea market and Amelia Bedelia is appalled at the idea of flea-bitten branches going on a perfectly nice tree. Her parents mention that they were once so poor they didn't have two pennies to rub together, and she wants to know why anyone would rub them.

Then comes the bit that gets the story moving. Her parents start reminiscing about a snow globe they bought on their very first Christmas, with a little couple inside who looked like them, and how Uncle Marvin tripped and smashed it. Her mother goes quiet about it.

Amelia Bedelia decides then and there to find them a new one. She needs money. So she and her friends set up a gift wrapping service.

She is, it turns out, a genuinely brilliant wrapper. Asked to wrap a plate for a teacher's birthday with no wrapping paper anywhere in the building, she makes it into a white rabbit with pom-pom nose, button eyes and pipe cleaner whiskers, because the teacher once had a rabbit called Daisy. Her classmate Clay then performs an actual rap about her being a wrapper, which is the sort of joke this book enjoys.

There's no caution needed here. It's warm, it's silly and nobody is unkind to anybody.

What's worth thinking about instead is whether the jokes will land. They all depend on your reader already knowing the idiom that's being taken literally, so a lot on my plate, giving someone five, finding the time. A child who has those will laugh out loud. A child still learning English, or one who reads very literally themselves, may just find it confusing.

It's also thoroughly American Christmas. Eggnog, Santa handing out candy canes, a town holiday pageant with a mayor lighting the tree. Not a problem, just not a British December.

What to read next

If it goes down well, try Amelia Bedelia Makes a Splash next. Same girl, same sort of jokes, and it starts with her absolutely furious on a bus to a summer camp she never wanted to go to.