Readers last year so enjoyed hearing holiday stories from their favorite children's authors and illustrators that we decided to do it again.

Avi

There isn't a Christmas when I don't reread Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I'm not sure when it was first read to me—very young, I think. Over the years, it has never failed to touch me with its brilliant concept, richness of character, wonderful writing and yes, its sentimentality. Equally evocative of my sense of Christmas is Dulce Domum, Chapter Five of Kenneth Grahame's classic children's novel The Wind in the Willows. Its melding of "home" and "Christmas" is quite extraordinary. And oh yes, I mustn't forget Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. Oh, what plum puddings of literature.

Judy Blume

Holidays meant food when I was growing up. My grandmother was the best cook in the family and would come to our house to prepare the holiday meal with my mother's assistance. Although I was called skinny malink by my favorite aunt, and my grandmother said I ate less than a bird, I loved turkey, sweet potatoes, and apple pie almost as much as I loved the rituals of preparing for the holiday meal. I'd help my mother set the table, using our best dishes and glasses and the real silver.(After dinner my mother would count each piece before she put it away, making sure no one had accidentally thrown a knife or fork into the trash while scraping plates.) My father created beautiful centerpieces and arranged platters of food that looked too pretty to eat. At the table I'd fill my plate, making my mother and aunt joke, "Her eyes are bigger than her stomach."When I ate too much I'd get stomach pains. "Too much roughage," my grandmother would say. But nothing could stop me from ending the meal with a slice of her apple pie. I still love to share holiday meals with my family. Like my father, I'm the one who enjoys making centerpieces and arranging the platters. I feel sad when a holiday comes along and I can't be in the kitchen with my daughter, Randy (the best cook in the family), peeling apples and chopping vegetables. I'm still a skinny malink, and sometimes I'll eat too much but I always save room for a big slice of Randy's apple pie. Some things never change.

Vicki Cobb

When I was 12 years old, I received a Gilbert Chemistry Set for Christmas. It contained many tiny bottles and vials that held the promise of revealing truth about matter. I lit a ribbon made of magnesium and delighted in the flash of white fire as it reacted violently with air. (Unfortunately, there were only two ribbons in the kit.) I heated iron filings and sulfur, and the smell of rotten eggs permeated the air. I tested acids and bases with litmus paper and phenolphthalein (formerly an ingredient of Ex Lax). I spent hours reading the book and experimenting and learning. When I wrote my book Chemically Active! teams of lawyers vetted it looking for possible dangers. In my opinion it was a case of "Don't put beans in your nose!" If I were a kid, I imagine I would read the caveats and try to figure out how to do something dangerous. (I did manage to get the warnings reduced to icons to keep the emphasis on fun.) Today my grandchildren are well protected from any chemistry that involves fire, let alone a real explosion. They spend hours playing video games where they adeptly blow up things. Sadly, they don't learn any chemistry from these virtual explosions.

Jules & Kate Feiffer

Kate Feiffer: For the longest time I thought the only mouse that had anything to do with Christmas was the one that didn't stir. That's because when I was growing up, yuletide lore had it that "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." Boy, was I surprised to find out how terribly wrong I was. After my daughter Maddy was born, my sister-in-law gave us a copy of Michael Brown's Santa Mouse, illustrated by Elfrieda A De Witt. Unlike Clement C. Moore's snoozing mouse, Santa Mouse has work to do, and of course, he'd probably enjoy a little something for his efforts. So now on Christmas eve, we leave milk and cookies on the wood stove for Santa; we put water and bread outside for the reindeer; and we tie a tiny bit of Swiss cheese to the tree. By morning the cheese is gone; in its place is a little note with the words scrawled in tiny letters, "Thank You from Santa Mouse." Jules Feiffer: Walking along west 89th street one New Year's eve with Kate when she was about five, I sprinted ahead, looked back at her and asked, "Am I walking to fast for you?" She ran to catch up, passed me, looked back at me and said, "No, am I walking too fast for you?" I speeded up past her and asked, "Now am I walking too fast for you?" "No, she said," skipping past me. "Am I walking too fast for you?" And so we proceeded up 89th street to Broadway, taking turns passing each other, and asking the one left behind, "Am I walking too fast for you?" Finally we were on Broadway, bustling with early evening life. We passed a construction site on the east side of the street. A crane with its massive shovel stood highlighted in profile against newly planted steel girders set against the gathering empty night just now filling with stars. I asked Kate if she knew what that hulking machine was. She said no and I told her it was a crane. "Do you know what it does?" I asked. She examined the crane for a second or two and said, "Bring the stars down from the sky?"