“Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving” is by Alice K. Boatwright.

Two days after Halloween, I walked into a shop affiliated with the world’s largest coffeehouse chain and noticed that everyone behind the counter was wearing a red apron. Above the gurgling and frothing of the coffee-making activities, jazzy, jingly Christmas music wafted out of the sound system. I may even have smelled peppermint in the air.

No, thank you. November is the month for Thanksgiving. While I have no objection to folks doing some discreet shopping for some of those big holidays coming up next month (in fact, hooray for the non-procrastinators), I don’t want to be hit over the head with the corporate message of “be festive and buy!”

This week’s book

“Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving” by Alice K. Boatwright

Firefly Ink Books – 42 pp – paperback $8.99, e-book $2.99

I guess I sound like an awful old crank, but this week I encountered someone even crankier – in a delightful little book penned by Alice K. Boatwright. The Seattle-area author is best known for her Ellie Kent mysteries, but earlier this year she launched her own imprint, Firefly Ink Books, with a slim volume called “Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving.”

Inspired by “A Christmas Carol,” the classic by Charles Dickens, Boatwright’s tale considers Thanksgiving from a crabby older woman’s point of view. Mrs. Potts is a widow who hasn’t spoken with her only child since Lucy dropped out of law school and ran off to live with a musician boyfriend in New York.

Mrs. Potts, like Scrooge, is driven by the almighty dollar, although in this 21st-century tale, rather than toiling with quill and ink over a ledger, she seldom looks up from her computer screen to consider the lives of the people working under her authority. One of them, Clara, is a young single mom.

Mrs. Potts is skeptical about Clara’s claim that her daughter has been ill, but she begrudgingly allows her subordinate the whole day off for Thanksgiving – provided she doesn’t show up late for work the following day.

It isn’t until Mrs. Potts herself gets home from work very late that Thanksgiving eve, and receives an unexpected visitor even later, that her outlook begins to change – toward life in general and the Thanksgiving holiday in particular.

In 11 short chapters, each only 2 to 3 pages long, Boatwright provides the details of a circumscribed life that becomes more expansive as Mrs. Potts has to accommodate this interloper.

Set in her ways, Mrs. Potts’ typical expression of disgust – “What’s the world coming to?” – gives way to a point of view that allows for gratitude and generosity. Artist Jan L. Waldron’s mixed media illustrations add more details to the charm of this story.

A word about the notion behind this new press: Boatwright established Firefly Ink with the intention to publish books that families and friends can read aloud, together. I think that’s a splendid idea.

But whether you choose to read “Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving” chapter-by-chapter in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, or in person over pumpkin pie, or remotely with far-flung relations this holiday season, is entirely up to you.