by Dylan Thomas
illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
This book has been on my list for a few years as something I might read aloud to the kids during Advent and Christmas. It's a short book and one we should be able easily to finish with time to read a second book as well.
Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet, writes about the Christmases he remembers as a boy, all jumbled up together in his mind. It's rambling and delightful, overflowing with irreverence and warmth and family. Though the text is prose, it's lyrical with sentences like:
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.The first memory is that of a fire, swiftly doused by the fire brigade.
And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them.
She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said: "Would you like anything to read?"Because, of course, the greatest reward in the world is a book to read!
The list of presents reveals the universality of gifts, both those "Useful" and "Useless." There's an essential illustration of the "crocheted nose bag" in the version I checked out of the library.
There are lots of references to smoking and drinking which didn't bother us because we read lots of old books that mention such things.
I have a paperback copy of this book (picked up at a library book sale), illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. That copy was put away with our Christmas things before I had time to read it, so I check out one from the library illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (linked above). I love the Schart Hyman illustrations; they suit the nostalgic tone perfectly. I also checked out the edition illustrated by Chris Raschka, but didn't care for it at all.
