Beginning sometime between The Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos and St. Nicholas Day, Athanasia and I begin reading childrens' Christmas books aloud to our boys. Usually two or three each day. We read a lot of mediocre books. About 40% I think of as filler. They aren't bad, they just aren't good. I wouldn't recommend them to you. About 50% are good. 10% are amazing and we wind up buying them, instead of just checking them out of the library. One such amazing book is I Saw Three Ships by Elizabeth Goudge (author) and Margot Tomes (illustrator).
Most of the time, when a well-meaning person takes a Christmas song or carol and turns it into a book they fail in originality; the book being wooden, predictable, and boring. This book is not like that. Though it follows the words of the song meticulously, it is a fresh but timeless story. It used to be that I would hear the song and think, "What is this about?" Now, when I hear the song, I think of this book and, even though the story was written a hundred years after the song, I can not imagine the song being about anything but the story in this book. I won't go into a lot of detail in describing the book, except to say there are layers of experience, unexpected persons, surprising behaviors, and by the time you close it there will be a tears in your eyes. Oh, the reason I am telling you about it now, more than a week before the Nativity Fast even starts is that it is out of print, and there are only three copies left on Amazon.
Update (8:37 am PST, 6 Nov 08): Now there are only 2 left.
3 comments:
Oooh, that looks good.
Have you read out loud the portions in the early Little House books that deal with Christmas?
Oh, yes. We discovered an abridged, adapted, and illustrated version for children and we read that, but I count it as one of the filler books. So, we still read the passages about Christmas from L.I.W.'s books.
In addition to the Christmas parts of L.I.W.'s books we read the Christmas portion of "Wind in the Willows" and all of Washington Irving's "Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall". I tried to read "A Christmas Carol" to them last year but Dickens is too dense for them.
Oooh, good ideas all!
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