Rudolph Shines Again

PreS-Gr 2—May penned the original tale of the plucky reindeer with the shining nose for the Montgomery Ward department stores to give away to customers in 1939, and it became a huge hit. In 1954 he published the sequel, originally titled Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Shines Again. A Little Golden Book version was also published in 1982. It's Christmas again, and Rudolph is having a hard time. His fellow reindeer and the elves are all jealous of him and treat him badly, which causes him to sulk and whine, and suddenly, his nose stops glowing. Thoroughly disheartened, he runs off to the woods, where he encounters a large and unhappy rabbit family, worried about their two missing children. Rudolph offers to search and uses his eyes and ears to avoid predators and find the lost bunnies. After he safely returns them, he decides to go back and help Santa any way he can, and because he's given up his whining and weeping, by the time he gets back to the North Pole, his glow has returned. Caparo's painterly illustrations are both lush and Disney-esque, and even the darkest images gleam with an internal light. Parents and grandparents will most appreciate the very evident moral of the tale.