Before the ballet there was Hoffmann's story, and it is stranger and better than the one most people think they know. Marie finds an odd nutcracker doll among Godfather Drosselmeier's Christmas gifts and ends up in a war, and then in a country made of sugar and chocolate.

Sanna Annukka illustrates it in the same graphic Finnish style that made her Fir Tree a collector's item, and Ten Speed bound it in cloth as a keepsake rather than a paperback. Read it in December, leave it out all season, and hand it to whoever in your family takes the tree most seriously.