ISBN 0307602397 - I'm having a great holiday season this year, reading my way through as many holiday stories as I can and finding compilations is a bit like finding out that none of your gifts are socks. This one, with a copyright of 1976, is extra special for the nostalgia factor.
Author Kathryn Jackson wrote the first two contributions, a poem titled Don't Look! and The Snowshoe Rabbits, a short story. The poem warns curious children not to go looking for hidden gifts or listening in on whispered conversations when Christmas is coming because it might spoil a surprise. In the short story, a family of five rabbits makes plans to visit their grandmother. When they wake to find the world buried in snow, the kids are certain their holiday is ruined. Father rabbit, however, saves the day - and shows us how snowshoe rabbits got their name.
Christina Rossetti contributes a short poem called What Can I Give Him? which asks what you can give Jesus when you have nothing - the answer, your heart. This is followed by an item by compiler/author Gale Wiersum. In Christmas Around the World, there is a short paragraph for each country that tells something about the holiday celebration in Spain, England, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Denmark and the Philippines.
Next, author Elizabeth Madox Roberts writes, in a poem titled Christmas Morning, what she thinks it might be like to be in Bethlehem on Christmas morning. Another item by Gale Wiersum follows that, a word and picture puzzle, with the intentionally incomplete name of Have a Merry --- .
The Lights on the Christmas Tree, by Florence Page Jaques, tells how Santa made the first tree, with only white decorations. It was missing something, so Santa sent the Littlest White Bear off to fetch a rainbow. The rainbow broke but they still used the pieces to decorate the tree - which is why we use rainbow-colored lights on our trees today! The last item is a 7-line poem by Phillips Brooks, Christmas Everywhere, which simple says that Christmas, and the Christ Child, are celebrated around the world.
The style of illustrator Sylvia Emrich's images is fairly consistent, which helps to tie the various stories and poems into one flowing book. The drawings are nice, colorful and basic, for the most part. Only in Christmas Around the World are images a bit more detailed. Gale Wiersum, outside of her written contributions, compiled the book and did a great job of it - in the 1970s, it wasn't so uncommon to find Santa and Jesus in a single book and no one freaked out, sued anyone else over it or died from it. Absolutely worth sharing with your young reader!
- AnnaLovesBooks
Author Kathryn Jackson wrote the first two contributions, a poem titled Don't Look! and The Snowshoe Rabbits, a short story. The poem warns curious children not to go looking for hidden gifts or listening in on whispered conversations when Christmas is coming because it might spoil a surprise. In the short story, a family of five rabbits makes plans to visit their grandmother. When they wake to find the world buried in snow, the kids are certain their holiday is ruined. Father rabbit, however, saves the day - and shows us how snowshoe rabbits got their name.
Christina Rossetti contributes a short poem called What Can I Give Him? which asks what you can give Jesus when you have nothing - the answer, your heart. This is followed by an item by compiler/author Gale Wiersum. In Christmas Around the World, there is a short paragraph for each country that tells something about the holiday celebration in Spain, England, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Denmark and the Philippines.
Next, author Elizabeth Madox Roberts writes, in a poem titled Christmas Morning, what she thinks it might be like to be in Bethlehem on Christmas morning. Another item by Gale Wiersum follows that, a word and picture puzzle, with the intentionally incomplete name of Have a Merry --- .
The Lights on the Christmas Tree, by Florence Page Jaques, tells how Santa made the first tree, with only white decorations. It was missing something, so Santa sent the Littlest White Bear off to fetch a rainbow. The rainbow broke but they still used the pieces to decorate the tree - which is why we use rainbow-colored lights on our trees today! The last item is a 7-line poem by Phillips Brooks, Christmas Everywhere, which simple says that Christmas, and the Christ Child, are celebrated around the world.
The style of illustrator Sylvia Emrich's images is fairly consistent, which helps to tie the various stories and poems into one flowing book. The drawings are nice, colorful and basic, for the most part. Only in Christmas Around the World are images a bit more detailed. Gale Wiersum, outside of her written contributions, compiled the book and did a great job of it - in the 1970s, it wasn't so uncommon to find Santa and Jesus in a single book and no one freaked out, sued anyone else over it or died from it. Absolutely worth sharing with your young reader!
- AnnaLovesBooks
