In this season of gift giving, what could be more welcome than tidings of comfort and joy? The following books offer both:

"Groucho Letters"

His bushy eyebrows were like two caterpillars dancing, his mustache blatant greasepaint until television producers demanded the real thing, and his fingers brandished a jaunty trademark cigar, perfectly timed to punctuate his wisecracks: "I don't care to belong to a club that will have me as a member." Or, Chico: "I would like to say good-bye to your wife." Groucho: "Who wouldn't?"

So it is probably not too surprising to learn that when Groucho Marx (1890-1977), iconic star of radio, movies and the long-running TV show "You Bet Your Life," was asked to collect his letters for a book, he wired back to the publishers: "I prefer not to have strangers prying into my mail. Would discuss this in detail but my secretary has a date in five minutes - with me." Fortunately for us, a subsequent invitation from the Library of Congress to donate his personal papers convinced him otherwise, and now there is joy and rapture to be found in "The Groucho Letters: Letters From and To Groucho Marx."

Groucho's correspondence with Warner Brothers (producers of "Casablanca") over a dispute about whether the Marx Brothers could make a movie called "A Night in Casablanca" is a hoot. Howlingly clever ("I'm sure the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo."), its mordant wit is largely lost on Warner's legal department. Arthur Sheekman - writer of Marx Brothers movies "Duck Soup" and "Monkey Business" - is one of many lively correspondents: "How's your insomnia? In Paris I came across a new kind of soporific. It isn't a pill; it's a suppository. The other day I stepped on one and my foot fell asleep."

Other notables such as E. B. White and T. S. Eliot are unexpected pen pals in a 20th century panoply of comedy writers, producers, performers, and occasional politicians.

While the book would have benefited mightily from a biography of Julius Henry Marx, aka "Groucho," as well as a glossary identifying the correspondents, it is nevertheless a delightful romp through show biz history, and a chance to discover in missives to his children, an affectionate and amusing father. After losing virtually everything in the stock market crash of 1929, Groucho later reflected, "The only real laughter comes from despair." What could be more timely than "The Groucho Letters" - a gift of wit and occasional wisdom!

"The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread"

Written by Don Roberston, this is an unforgettable, sweet saga about the making of an "American" hero, 9-year-old Morris Bird III. This remarkable book is fictionalized around an actual historical event, the East Ohio Gas Explosion on Oct. 20, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. According to the coroner, the magnitude of the fire and its intense temperatures were powerful enough to vaporize human flesh and bone.

When Morris Bird skips school and sets out to visit his best pal, Stanley Chaloupka, crossing four miles of Cleveland's unknown city streets, he has no idea that he is heading into "the bloodiest disaster in the city's history." He just wants to win back his own self-respect for wronging a schoolmate; and so Morris Bird III has decided to "accomplish something that's difficult," in the words of his "almost pretty" fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Dallas. Pulling his whiny little sister, Sandra in a limping red wagon, he heads off with a jar of peanut butter, a map, a compass, a knife and his cherished picture of Veronica Lake.

But before our young hero embarks on what will become an extraordinary archetypal journey, Robertson wants us to understand just how ordinary Morris is. So the first 70 pages of the narrative are uneventful - a slow, meandering and nostalgic evocation of a Midwestern boyhood in 1944. These early ramblings (there are no chapters) are brimming with period detail and boyish musings, and only an occasional foreshadowing of the tragedy to come. I urge you not to rush...savor the simmer and the cast of unique characters whose lives you will be privileged to know, if only briefly. All too soon the action will boil over, and your heart will burst.

Robertson's story reminds us of something that Arthur Ashe once observed: "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." In this novel you will find not only comfort and joy, but "The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread."

"Letters from Father Christmas"

And finally, J.R.R. Tolkein's little-known "Letters from Father Christmas" is bound to prompt a smile. Beginning in 1920, when his first son, John, was 3 years old, through 1943 when the last of his four children, Priscilla, outgrew them, Tolkein composed and illustrated charming holiday letters to his children. They were postmarked from the North Pole, and written in a shaky script by "Father Christmas." What began as brief, loving notes with a hurried "my sleigh is waiting" or "a cold kiss," evolved into a series of marvelous, whimsical stories about life at the North Pole. Often featured is an accident-prone and mischievous Polar Bear named Karhu who eventually begins to add his own notes, in "Arktik langwidge," to the letters. Karhu does all the naughty things children dream of, and Tolkein draws colorful pictures "of everything that happens," including an unexpected war with cave-dwelling goblins.

Check out the differences in editions; the one I read was revised in 1999 and included formerly unpublished letters and drawings. These tales evoke the storyteller in all of us, and may inspire you to create your own legacy of epistolary enchantment for the littlest members of your family.

KATHY HICKMAN can be contacted at news@thesunchronicle.com.