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. Côté's illustrations are simple without being cartoonish, demonstrating the same warm understanding of childhood. Fagan believably captures the delicate balance of friendship in the very young and lets the story pay out with welcome complexity. Friends again, the four play hopscotch, using their stones as markers. Feeling guilty and thinking quickly, Ella May rushes into her house and returns with a solution standing for an apology: With a broom and box and bit of ribbon, she fashions a pony for Maya and pulls similar makeshift magic for Amir. Sudden rain washes away Manuel's work, and Maya and Amir again stand disappointed. Both make wishes, for a pony and a moonwalk. He only charges a penny! The stones of Maya and Amir emerge with telltale stripes, like Ella May's. He returns pulling a wagon that holds his "amazing machine" (made of a cardboard box), designed to turn ordinary stones into wishing stones.
Nobody stays for lunch, and Manuel calls her mean. All rush to show Ella May, who rejects them. Ella May declares it too special for them to hold they set off to find their own. She makes a wish on it, and it comes true! Friends Manuel and Amir and Maya come to see her new wishing stone. Ella May comes home from the beach with a pretty stone she thinks is magical.
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