On Story Bent

From the dust jacket: "Here, depicted in loving detail, is Christmas celebrated at the beginning of [the 20th] century in England, indoors and out, upstairs and downstairs... Family and friends gather at the large, comfortable house in the country, and the festivities begin! What bustle and fun there is from Christmas Day and its lavish plum-pudding dinner on through the holidays that follow, with activities galore for one and all. Riding to hounds, ice skating on the pond, dancing at the great, fancy dress ball, watching the pantomime, playing Blindman's Buff--all this and much more springs to life in John Goodall's exquisitely executed watercolor paintings. As he did in An Edwardian Summer , Mr. Goodall portrays an era now long gone. This is a remarkable recreation of a special time, a special way of life, and an invitation to join in a spirit of joy that transcends time itself." While the name Goodall rings a bell, I just recently discovered this immersive, wordle...

This is a cute classic -- the story of a Christmas tree that keeps getting lopped smaller and smaller, finding it's way around the neighborhood and spreading good cheer. It's a recent addition to our family library and hasn't quite hit the top tier of favorites yet, but the rhyming text is fun to read and gives lots of room for using different dramatic voices. :) In a spirit of complete honesty, the main sticky bit is that it uses a couple phrases once each, 'good heavens' and 'jolly, by golly', which I agree are pretty innocuous on a scale, but I try not to use in toddler level reading. Generally it'd be easy to just drop them, but in this case (to paraphrase Wodehouse) it plays merry havoc with the rhythm of the thing. xD Anyhow, that quibble might not bother other folks at all, and it's obviously stood the test of time and earned its classic status. If I was using the star system I'd say four out of five stars. Now I didn't grow up on The ...

From the author's note at the beginning: "At Chrismastime, in the New Hampshire town where I live, it is traditional for white electric candles to be put in house windows and in the windows of the Baptist Church. It is a beautiful sight. But the early residents of this New England town and other villages weren't always so festive. [some early settlers] tended to avoid any observance of the holiday whatsoever. In fact, one source tells of an Irishman being chased out of a New England town in 1755 because he was 'a Christmas Man.' All of this set me to thinking, 'What might have happened in the early 1800s if a family accustomed to celebrating Christmas moved into a New England town? Using historical fact and my research as a departure point, I began to imagine that it could have happened this way..." I grew up with this story and it's just delightful. Tomie dePaola is, of course, well known in picture book circles and this one fits right in with his be...