Nicholas Oldland

Bear, Moose and Beaver, three woodland friends whose escapades have been chronicled by Canadian author/illustrator Nicholas Oldland in five previous picture books, return in this sixth tale, this time celebrating Christmas. Making all of the preparations—baking, hanging stockings, stringing lights—the trio realize they have forgotten something very important: the Christmas tree! But when their sojourn to find one locates the perfect arboreal specimen, a problem arises: tree-hugging Bear will not let Beaver chop down the fir, in order to bring it inside. Is Christmas ruined? Or can an alternative be found...?

As always with the books in Oldland's Life in the Wild series, there is a message in One Wild Christmas—in this case, about preserving the beauty of the natural world, and finding a way to celebrate the holiday that satisfies all participants. I found the story here amusing, particularly as it hearkened back to the hilarious initial book in the series, Big Bear Hug, which established our ursine hero's great love of trees. Fans of these characters will enjoy the holiday hi-jinks, and the amusing cartoon-like illustrations. For my part, I see that there is a seventh installment, Hockey in the Wild, which I now plan to track down.… (more)

As a Canadian, I felt that I had to pick up a book about hockey. It's basically law!

Hockey in the Wild by Nicholas Oldland is a fun book about friends playing the fun and frozen game of hockey! The beaver tries to jump into the lake to swim, but the lake is frozen! He grabs his buddies and they decide to lace up their skates and go play a good old game of hockey! Unfortunately, the ice wasn't totally frozen over yet. In the meanwhile, they found other things to do until they could finally play their game!

The illustrations are cartoon-y, simple yet fun. I really enjoyed the style and felt it mashed well with the story. The beaver was the most amusing character design wise for me; he had me giggling a lot.

The safety element of not going on shin ice wasn't there, which got to me as someone who preaches safety, but maybe that could be a learning element? I wouldn't want kids to think it's funny...

Two out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kids Can Press for sending me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.… (more)