All the houses on a certain fashionable city street were lived in except one, until unfashionable Mr. Crockett moved in. He fixed up the run-down brownstone, and the following spring he planted a dismal little tree in front of it. “Beauty is as beauty does,” he had told the neighborhood florist from whom he bought the plant on the previous Christmas Eve. Years passed. Mr. Crockett’s bread crumbs encouraged birds to come to the tree. Seeing the birds flock there was encouragement for young brown-skinned David join Mr. Crockett on the stoop to enjoy them. More years passed. A small miracle occurred, the kind of small secular miracle occasioned by gentle acts and the possibility of wonder. First published as a picture book in 1972, Nascimbene’s subdued watercolor palette and stylized forms are a perfect new complement to Zolotow’s understated, timeless fable. (Ages 4-8)