The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol. Teachers will hope that a ``big book'' version is in the works for the classroom. It's fun for readers who aren't ready for Graeme Base's Animalia (1987) and great reinforcement of sound- letter correspondence for initial s and sh (both are used soft c is not). This bit of whimsy is made memorable by the crescendo of suspense built by the relentlessly alliterative text, the ground- level illustrations of flora and fauna (highly realistic except for the self-satisfied visage of the snail and the toad licking its lips), and the presence of the other animals and S-shapes to search for in the pictures. Ignoring the warnings of other forest denizens (all creatures with names beginning with the letter s-sparrow, spider, swallowtail, skink, stinkbug, and squirrel), it reaches the summit, only to be devoured by the toad it has unwittingly climbed. This duo collaborated on the alliterative Four Famished Foxes and Fosdyke (1995, not reviewed) here, a supercilious little slug struggles up a bumpy slope blocking the path through its woodland domain.
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