Family Tale Finds Way Into Print : Books: An illustrated children’s work, “Chita’s Christmas Tree” evokes black middle-class life about 1912.

When Elizabeth Howard was a little girl visiting relatives in Baltimore in the late 1930s, she loved to hear her grown-up cousin Chita tell stories about what she had done as a girl in the early decades of this century.

Among her favorites was the story of Chita and her father taking their horse and buggy into a park to find a Christmas tree. Although Chita picked a tree much too tall to fit into their home, her father dutifully carved her name in its trunk. And on Christmas morning, the tree adorning the family’s living room also bore her name, so Chita knew that Santa had brought the tree she had chosen.

Howard, now of Pittsburgh, must have heard the story “a million times” during summer vacations and Christmas holidays in Baltimore, says the cousin, Chita Shipley, 81, and a lifelong Baltimore resident.

Now others can hear and read that story in the just-published “Chita’s Christmas Tree” by Howard, the daughter of Chita’s first cousin, John Fitzgerald. Set in Baltimore around 1912, the book, especially for children 4 to 7, is based on Chita’s girlhood in a middle-class black Baltimore family.

Born Elizabeth McCard in 1908, Chita (a nickname derived from muchachita , Spanish for “little girl,” and bestowed by her father) was the only child of Harry McCard, a general practitioner, and his wife, Eva.

Educated at Smith College in the 1920s (she was the first black student to live in a dormitory there), Shipley returned to Baltimore, where she married, taught Latin and mathematics for 13 years in public schools, worked for the Baltimore Urban League and now volunteers daily at Baltimore Neighborhoods, advising renters about their rights.

Shipley, obviously thrilled with the colorful portrayal of her often-told tale, said during a recent interview that her cousin had taken some poetic license with the facts. For instance, she sent Chita and her father deep into the woods, rather than into nearby Druid Hill Park, in search of a tree.

“The stories Chita has told me are such fun,” said Howard, by way of explaining what prompted her to write the book.

There also seems to be a shortage of children’s books about middle-class black families “living normal lives,” says Howard, who teaches children’s and young adult literature at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

“Chita’s Christmas Tree” is the second of three children’s books by Howard. The others are “The Train to Lulu’s,” which was published last year, and “Aunt Flossie’s Hats,” which is a picture book that is not yet published.

Howard’s story is enhanced by Floyd Cooper’s lavish illustrations. Working from photographs supplied by Shipley, Cooper created holiday scenes similar to those from Chita’s childhood. He, too, exercised a bit of poetic license.

“We had a nice house, but it wasn’t this big and grand,” Shipley says, pointing to the drawing of a child hurrying down a wide staircase on Christmas morning.

Although the house has been torn down, the stories born there live on. A photograph of Chita, a child of maybe 3 smiling out of the gathered hood of a rain cape, prompts another one:

“I don’t remember this, of course, but I’ve been told,” Shipley muses. “I was given this raincoat by some relative or other on my birthday, which was in February. It seems it didn’t rain and so I didn’t have a chance to wear it.

“We used to go to Atlantic City every year for Easter, and I insisted on taking the raincoat with me because it might rain while we were there. Well, we stayed there maybe a week and it didn’t rain and it seemed by that time I was really upset. So they decided to pacify me they’d have this picture taken . . . by an Atlantic City photographer to dry my tears,” she says.

And now all these years later, the photo has not only dried her tears but also brought her many smiles as it graces the back cover of “Chita’s Christmas Tree,” the book that tells a lovely story of a little girl a long time ago.