When the widow McDowell and her son Thomas knock at the woodcarver, Jonathan Toomey's door one winter's day, they receive a frosty reception.

For Jonathan keeps himself to himself - Mr Gloomy the children call him.

What no one knows, though, is that once he was a happy man with a wife and baby and that it is grief at their deaths that has made him so hard and cold.

Would the carver make a set of nativity figures for Christmas? the widow asks, and could her son watch him work? When, albeit gruffly, Jonathan agrees to her requests, it is the beginning of a miracle that will see the warming of his sad, chill heart.;This is Susan Wojciechowski's first picture book.

The artist P.J.Lynch won the 1987 Mother Goose Award for "A Bag of Moonshine" by Alan Garner, and has also illustrated "Melisande", East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon" (shortlisted for the 1991 Kate Greenaway Medal) and "Catkin".