Christmas Wishes is a funny, heartfelt middle-grade fantasy about a lonely girl who learns that the best things in life can't be wished for. They have to be given. Eleven-year-old Maya Nowak lives in Avondale, Chicago, with parents who barely see her. Her dad runs a pawn shop where "math is a matter of opinion," and her mom is an influencer chasing followers through a ring light. Maya's comforts are books, her kind fifth-grade teacher Ms. Morales, and Mrs. Kowalczyk, the 91-year-old upstairs with eleven cats and a parrot. Then Vivian Lake, a glamorous woman in a red coat, walks into the pawn shop. She offers Maya seven wishes in exchange for her soul, all spelled out in a 999-page contract. Around the same time, Maya befriends the ghosts of Hollander House: Tommy Brennan, a paperboy trapped there since Christmas Eve 1952 Walter, a ticket taker from the 1893 World's Fair who still charges fifty cents admission Madame Irene, a dramatic opera singer Every wish backfires comically. Wishing to be noticed puts Maya's face on a billboard. Wishing to be rich buries her house in pennies. The strict principal turns into a fifth grader and becomes Maya's unlikely friend, and wishing for "normal" parents brings an eerie, too-perfect family. Along the way, Maya discovers that Tommy sold his own soul to save his little sister June. June is still alive at 81, and she is Ms. Morales's grandmother. Maya reads the entire contract under her blanket and finds a loophole on page 777: a wish made purely for someone else is a gift, and a gift cancels everything. At midnight on Christmas Eve, Vivian tempts her with what she wants most, Tommy alive and by her side forever. Maya refuses. She gives her final wish to free him, knowing she'll lose her best friend, and the contract bursts into 999 golden snowflakes. On Christmas morning, Tommy says goodbye to June. Santa leaves Maya the things she never wished for: a warm coat, a bookshelf of her own and a camera for pictures of people who love her. Her parents admit they can't give her the home she needs, so she goes to live with Ms. Morales. Hollander House becomes a neighborhood museum, with Walter still at the door. At heart, the novel is about loneliness, being seen, and the difference between getting what you want and giving what someone else needs.
