An Advent of Christmas Books - The Christmas Book by Dick Bruna

The Christmas Book
By Dick Bruna
Methuen (1964), 1982

Dick Bruna has been illustrating picture books for more than 60 years! His first picture book was published in 1953, and, according to my copy, The Christmas Book was first published in 1964, reprinted five times, then a new edition in 1976, again reprinted numerous times, with my copy printed in 1982 - and of course much more has probably happened to this simple little book in the years since then.
I was given my copy, as a Christmas gift when I was pregnant with my son in 1985. So this is a special book in our house, patched as it is with sellotape and with discolouration on the white pages. The Christmas tale is told fully but simply, and accompanied by the simplest drawings possible. A treasure.
Read about Dick Bruna here. I was interested to read that his father was a publisher, his company one of the biggest in the Netherlands. He's probably best known for his Miffy books about a little rabbit.

An Advent of Christmas Books - Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star by Petr Horacek

Here's a lovely new hardback Christmas picture book from Walker Books. The author/illustrator is Petr Horacek who has a great website here. He's a young guy, originally from Czechoslovakia, but now living in England after meeting and marrying an English girl.
Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star is about a goose and her friends are excited that it's Christmas - definitely a Northern Christmas as there is snow everywhere (and the white background is excellent for ensuring the text is readable over the full-page illustrations). They have decorated a beautiful Christmas tree but Suzy wants a star for the top of the tree so decides she will go up into the sky to fetch the bright star she sees there. She jumps, slides and tries everything she can to get up to the star, and suddenly realises that she is lost.
Suzy walked and walked and walked.
She was tired.
"It's Christmas Eve, I can't reach the star
and I'm very far from my friends,"
she thought.
The pages are filled with whiteness with the solitary goose looking very sorry for herself, but then 'Ding, Honk, Ding, Honk' she hears the sounds of her friends and follows the noise until she finds her way home again (back past all the obstacles she used to jump from before). And when they all look up at the tree again, the star is now in perfect position at the top of the tree.
It looked magical!
"Happy Christmas," honked Suzy Goose
with all her friends.
I love the illustrations. The backgrounds are thick with texture, crayon rubbings, snowflake shapes embedded with inky blue watercolour skies. The main features - the animals, the tree, the star, have been drawn in loose pencil sketched lines, coloured and cut out then applied to the background. This brings them to the fore of the pictures and they often have an added sheen of the paper's texture.
The story is told simply, with all the drama in the illustrations. Pages are sometimes a single double-page spread, on others the pages are divided into panels showing Suzy's progression.
I hadn't heard of this author/illustrator before but I'll be looking for more of his books, I so love his style. There are other Suzy books and many other titles and illustrations shown on his website.
Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star
By Petr Horacek
Walker Books, 2009
ISBN 9781406320657

An Advent of Christmas Books - The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski and PJ Lynch

I have two copies of this beautiful Christmas story. The first, acquired from a sale of withdrawn library books, is a large landscape format hardback with illustrations that go right to the edge of the pages, with a panel around 2/3 the left hand page for the text, and an additional small illustration at the bottom. This format does show the illustrations at their best, the textures of wood and clothing, skin and hair beautifully detailed in each panel.
The new copy has come to me as part of the P.J. Lynch Classic Christmas Collection in a boxed set with A Christmas Carol and The Gift of the Magi (which I'll review at a later date). It's smaller and portrait format, the illustrations just over half the size of the earlier edition, and with a pale relief effect as a border for each page (see picture). The illustrations are still beautiful, but when you compare the two the larger format is so worthwhile for the extra detail you can see.
I also take issue with the covers - the earlier cover depicts Jonathan Twoomey teaching the boy how to carve. A warm, focused, intimate moment. The new cover shows the mother, son and Jonathan on the snow-strewn street holding hands. Surely this gives away the end of the story, the happily ever after shown on the front cover.
The story, briefly, is about Jonathon Twoomey, a wood-carver known as Mr Gloomy, for he's always grumpy and never smiles or laughs. None of them know about the loss which has made him so unhappy. A widow and her son move to the village and she asks JT if he will carve some figures for her from wood - a nativity scene that they loved but have lost. They later ask if Thomas can watch JT carve. As the days go by they come again and again and slowly the relationship warms, and of course if you've seen that second cover you know the result!
It is a beautiful and touching tale, with quite a long text, worth settling down for a long read to enjoy the story and examine the illustrations as they deserve.
Much as I love a beautiful box set of books, such a treasure, I think I'll keep going back to my battered ex-library copy for the full experience.

An Advent of Christmas Books - The Night Before Christmas

A tiny review for a tiny edition of an old story.

This book has been letterpress printed by Graham Judd who, as well as playing bass in a band with my husband, is a talented printer. It's a tiny treasure and I'm going to hang it from my Christmas tree, and get a couple more copies to go in some presents.

This book is a wee gem, just over 2"tall.

Here are the final pages:

If you'd like to get some copies yourself contact Graham at GTO Printers - www.gtoprinters.co.nz

An Advent of Christmas Books - The Twelve Days of Holidays by Yvonne Morrison and Jenny Cooper

Christmas books aren't all sweetness and light. Just as I'd rather listen to Silent Night than Jingle Bell Rock, I'd also rather read a Christmas story which has a fair dose of tradition. Today's book has only the merest tinge of tradition and I won't be giving it to anyone as a gift this year!
The nod to tradition is that it is modeled on The Twelve Days of Christmas (and you could certainly sing it to that tune); but instead of gifts, each day sees a very stressed mother yell another order at her daughter, accumulating day by day.
'On the twelfth day of holidays, my mother said to me:
Be good and you can stay up... go and bug your father ... I can't wait till school starts ... have you fed the dog yet ... elbows off the table ... write to your grandma ... don't break your new toys ... go, wash your face ... help me wash the dishes ... play with your sister ... tidy up your bedroom ... and please will you turn off that TV!' On the thirteenth day she's sent off to Gran's.
There is a good deal of humour in the illustrations - created using lead pencil and watercolour. The whole family looks slightly mad and have Jenny Cooper's familiar big heads, seen in a number of other books she's illustrated (Shut the Gate, On a Rabbit Hunt, Peter & the Pig, The Reluctant Little Flowergirl and others).
Perhaps I took against this book largely because of the way the mother is depicted - with her mouth is wide open, yelling, in all the early illustrations, and downturned, sad and worn out, in the latter pages. Now I know as well as anyone that Christmas is a stressful time, but there's more to the holidays than kids watching TV all day, and mums can have a good time in the holidays rather than yelling at the kids constantly. Look out for the cat - he doesn't get a mention in the text, but the cat is involved in every scene (except the one featuring the family dog), and is a real character and far more worthy of our attention than the ever-present TV.
Read about Yvonne Morrison on the Christchurch City Libraries great author resource here, and they also have an interview with Jenny Cooper here. Yvonne has also written a number of other Christmas titles for children - Brian the Big-Brained Romney, A Kiwi Jingle Bells and A Kiwi Night Before Christmas.

The Twelve Days of Holidays
Written by Yvonne Morrison
Illustrated by Jenny Cooper
Scholastic New Zealand
Paperback, 2009
ISBN 9781869439163