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After their days at Miss Crampton's Academy, Samantha and her friends head to Culpepper's Pond for ice skating. Nellie, an excellent skater, teaches the other girls to skate backwards and to perform figure eights. Snobbish Edith publicly invites everyone except Nellie to a party. Samantha shows compassion toward Nellie whose parents have little money.Nellie goes forward to create a beautiful conclusion to this delightful holiday story by Valerie Tripp.

I appreciated the history of ice skating from "A Peak Into the Past." ( )

This American Girl pocket sized story book is about Samantha, a wealthy Victorian girl. She decides to have a winter party and invites people. There is to be a gift exchange, but one girl can not afford to buy gifts. After a disastrous trial of trying to make gifts, Nellie does not see her friends for a while. The girls are sad, thinking they offended her, but she surprises them with the best gift of all. Like many of the American Girl books, this book deals with social classes, in this case Wealthy Girl, Poor Girl. It stresses the idea that Christmas gifts don't have to be bought, pushing down back the materialism of Christmas. Nellie's gift, while not expensive, was given with her whole heart, which makes it even better than any little trinket that someone could've bought. This book is trying to teach children a lesson about money and materialism that is rampant at Christmas. The characters are believable and familiar if the child has read the Samantha series. The history at the end of the book helps explain Victorian Christmas customs, both the rich and poor. There is also a little craft (which Samantha and Nellie try to do in the book) for a parent/adult to do with a child. This is a good book for elementary age children. ( )

Nellie has been teaching Samantha and her friends from school ice skating tricks, and the girls have been having a wonderful time. When snotty Edith invites the girls to a party without Nellie, they decide to have one with her, but end up excluding her because she can’t afford gifts. In the end she creates a wonderful gift of her own- a magical looking skating rink in the woods. ( )

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