Showing posts with label favorite holiday book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label favorite holiday book. Show all posts

Friday, November 30, 2018

Favorite Holiday Reads

This book has already been mentioned. In fact, I think I bring it up every single time we do the holiday book thing. Here it is again, with good reason. It's my favorite. Has been for decades now. The story is aces. The art is utterly haunting - even though it's cartoon water color, it's vivid and fluid and alive. You feel like you're actually striding the strawberry fields. It doesn't matter how often I read the book, I end up on the emotional roller coaster of the story whether I mean to or not.

So sure. It's a silly little holiday book. A trifle. A book for kids and for kids at heart. And if you read it to one of your favorite kids, the art and the story will stick with you for days and days. Maybe for the entire year until the next time you read it to someone. Or have it read to you.

If you're of a certain age, you recall exactly what it was like to go see E.T. in the movie theater for the first time and to expose yourself to the master emotional manipulation that defines that movie. Red Ranger Came Calling is the watercolor and blue haze of swear words hanging over the fields and frightening the rabbits version. It's sublime emotional manipulation. 

To my mind, that makes it Art. Fight me. Just remember. I have back up.
Photo credit: Faye Heath

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Jeffe's Favorite Holiday Book

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is our favorite holiday book. I have a Christmas tradition that involves my favorite seasonal books. I keep them in the bins with the decorations and bring them out only at Christmastime, when they occupy a pride-of-place position on an end table.

I haven't brought them out this year yet, as I'm a strictly no-Christmas-until-after-Thanksgiving kind of gal, but they include A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Christmas Carol, and some pretty-picture books like Santa Fe Christmas.

I at least flip through them every year - and many of them are from my childhood, so they're a reminder of the continuity of those family celebrations.

But the one I think of first, and always with a smile, is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

It was published in 1972 and I think I might have a first edition. (I'll have to check when I get it out!) My stepdad Leo married my mom in summer of 1973 and I remember him getting that book and reading it to us out loud as we sat in the living room, between a lively fire in the fireplace and the towering, twinkling Christmas tree.

This book is so damn funny. I remember we all laughed until we wiped tears from our eyes.

Revisiting it as an adult, I've discovered this book says so much about the true values that Jesus taught - loving our neighbors, practicing tolerance and compassion, including everyone in celebrations, not just those we approve of. It's about people learning to be better - both the "awful" ones, and the ones who already thought they were good.

Highly recommend.