Publisher's Weekly
Hines, who has sold nearly half a million copies of Alcott's rediscovered stories "The Quiet Little Woman" and "Kate's Choice," here gathers those tales along with 18 others to comprise a "Christmas treasury"-all of Alcott's known Christmas sketches in one volume. Some will be dearly familiar to readers; an excerpt from Little Women, for example, reminds us of the yuletide benevolence of Marmee and her four girls. Other touching stories are less well known, such as "What Love Can Do," about residents of a boarding house joining together to make a lovely Christmas for two poor girls. (Poverty and Christmas charity are the themes that tie most of these stories together.) Hines can be a heavy-handed compiler, whose editorial notes tell the reader how to respond to the stories. ("Perhaps we today need to learn a lesson from Miss Alcott and from Patty," he intones at the close of "The Quiet Little Woman.") Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.