Can You See What I See? The Night Before Christmas: Picture Puzzles to Search and Solve.  Walter Wick. New York, NY: Cartwheel Books (Distributed in Canada by Scholastic Canada), 2005. 35 pp., cloth, $17.99. ISBN 0-439-76927-2.   Subject Headings: Picture puzzles-Juvenile literature. Children’s poetry, American. Santa Claus-Juvenile poetry. Christmas-Juvenile poetry.   Grades 3 and up / Ages 8 and up.   Review by Dave Jenkinson.   **** /4

Children, adolescents and, dare I say, many adults have been entertained by Walter Wick’s series of photographic “I Spy” search and find books. Can You See What I See? The Night Before Christmas is linked to Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicolas” (aka “The Night Before Christmas”), the stanzas of which are printed on both sets of the book’s endpapers. The dozen “chapters,” which bear names such as “Not a Creature was Stirring,” “Visions of Sugarplums” and “It Must Be Saint Nick,” are each linked to words or phrases from one of the 14 stanzas of Moore’s poem. Wick’s themed and object-filled colour photos spill across most of each pair of facing pages with about a third of one page being reserved for the text which, in addition to containing some rhyme, delineates what the reader/viewer is to find in the photograph. Consequently, on “The Stockings” page, the text found below the heading reads:
 

Can you see

What I see?

 A horse-drawn sleigh,

a caboose, a moose,

a fox that’s chasing a big white goose,

a leaping deer,

a runaway ski,

a rolling pin,

a turtle, a key,

a swan, 3 camels,

2 bunnies, a glove,

a man in the moon,

a girl with a dove.
 

     The book’s two closing pages provide some information about the author and how the book was created. 

     An obvious Christmas gift for an individual, Can You See What I See? The Night Before Christmas also belongs in school and public libraries. 

Highly Recommended.
 
Dave Jenkinson teaches courses in children’s and YA literature in the Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba. 

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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