Great Monday Give: Christmas Golden Books

This week's Great Monday Give is a nice three-way Little Golden Book prize package that includes vintage, scribbled-on, well-loved but still great reading copies of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa's Toy Shop and The Night Before Christmas. To be entered to win these too-cute-for-words titles, simply comment on this post before Sunday, December 14 at midnight.

The winner of last week's give of A House is a House for Me using the trustly blind scroll and point method is Swati! The minute you can muster the strength (lest the thrill of the win has zapped your energy entirely) please e-mail me at webe(at)soon(dot)com with your mailing address so I can send out your prize right away.

That said, have a practically perfect day. (My boy's been tapping the Mary Poppins a bit too much.)

Grandpa's Witched-Up Christmas

Grandpa's Witched-up Christmas
James Flora ~ Atheneum, 1982

Grandpa's at it again. Flora's last book just might be his freakiest, perfect for my three-year-old son and self-proclaimed "bad dude." (Preschool playground lingo I assure you, not a word found in the nomenclature of home.) I mean, what other book will you literally see Santa Claus kick booty (another delightful playground euphemism)... giving a firm strangle hold to the witch who almost makes a wee Grandpa miss Christmas? The person Flora fashioned this "Grandpa" after must have been a fellow as freaky as his stories... one can only hope this wonderful creature was real.

Again, much like the Halloween version, I find the illustrations vaguely horrifying and offensive, but my son sits on the edge of his chair from the beginning right to the end. Boys dig this stuff.

So, again, the "I" in our story gets an earful from his tall-tale Gramps about the time he was getting home for Christmas and ~ like so many Little Red Riding Hoods before him ~ took a shortcut through the woods (always a storybook BAD IDEA). Only this time he gets spooked and transformed by a gaggle of creepy witches... Check these chicks out.

Those witches were a fearsome lot. They wore ragged black capes and carried greasy sacks slung over their shoulders. I know what was in those sacks -- children's finger bones, dead cats, dried bats and hop toads. Those are the sorts of things witches use to make magic. The first witch was fat and dumpy, with sharp teeth and hair like an unmowed lawn. The second witch was old and shrunken, she looked like a skeleton. She didn't have any feet. That's why she rode a broom. The third witch was tall and warty. She wore a real pointed witch's hat. Her eyes would make a polecat shiver.

Only Santa could go medieval enough on these nasty witches and save Christmas. Good fun! There are lots of Flora fans out there, but I would be interested to hear from somebody who actually had these books when they are young (I know Samy had at least one), just so I can be assured I'm not scarring my boy for life by sharing. Chime in folks.

Also by:
Pishtosh Bullwash and Wimple
Kangaroo for Christmas
Stewed Goose
Great Green Turkey Creek Monster
Grandpa's Farm
Leopold the See-Through Crumbpicker
The Day the Cow Sneezed
Little Hatchy Hen
Grandpa's Ghost Stories
My Friend Charlie
Sherwood Walks Home
The Fabulous Firework Family

Petunia's Christmas

Petunia's Christmas
Roger Duvoisin ~ Alfred A Knopf, 1952

As most of you know, I am a huge Petunia fan and really anything Duvoisin... so imagine my surprise unpacking our Christmas books from the attic to find this one. A library sale score from last season that I'd all but forgotten. The illustrations are a knock out (as always), but even more than that, this is the one where our fowl heroine falls in love. (And seeing as I was married the day after Christmas, I am all about holiday romance, even more so when it's goose on goose!)

Who wouldn't fall in love with a love story that begins like this...

The new snow was soft like a kitten's fur. Petunia liked it that way, and she went out for a walk to feel it with her feet.

Thump thump. Sigh. Then she meets a gander.

"I am Petunia," said Petunia. "You are handsome."

"I am too fat," sighed Charles. "Being fattened for Christmas. Alas, I fear I'll be roasted and served with apple sauce. Aren't you being fattened too?"

"Pets aren't fattened," said Petunia. "I am a pet. Why don't you come with me and be a pet too."

And so begins the tale of one little goose with a huge heart set on freeing her one true love. When scare tactics fail, she resorts to good old fashioned hard work to save the day. Though still available in new form, there are plenty of vintage copies available online for cheap. If you only buy a single holiday book this season, make it this one. And then, ask Santa for the rest in the series!

Also by:
Petunia
Petunia, Beware!
The Rain Puddle
A Child's Garden of Verses
Veronica and the Birthday Present
Donkey Donkey
The Old Bullfrog

The Night Before Christmas

The Night Before Christmas
Clement C. Moore ~ pics, Charles Clement ~ Whitman, 1955

First off, I wanna thank Dooce for her awesome shout out yesterday, and welcome all you new folks that came wandering that way. Next I wanna say get ready because my Christmas books come down from the attic today along with my ever growing number of red and green plastic tubs filled will all kinds of holiday junk. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. That said, here's a little sweet pea I found the other day...

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

My son has known this story by heart since birth practically, and what is annoying about having 20 different versions of the same tale (with ever so slight variations) is that he constantly interrupts to point out the differences. Still, I can't help collecting every one I come across. Besides, talking away differences is way easier than explaining to my bird-nut-of-a-son why every Christmas cartoon features penguins when he knows darn well there are no penguins at the North Pole. Har.

This one is the perfect purse size, and every time I see an old 25 cent price tag on a book it makes me wish I had a time machine. How much fun would I have traveling back to an old time five and dime... Makes me crazy to think.

Rabbit and His Friends

Rabbit And His Friends
Richard Scarry ~ Golden Press, 1953

Stepping out of Christmas for a second and into the realm of Little Golden Books, and what might have been my favorite of the genre when I was wee. This story is the primary reason I knew was a platypus was growing up, and the absolute main reason I wound up a mountain in a rain storm to see one in the wild when my husband and I traveled to Australia. As we stood in the mist and the fog on a little wooded trail and watched the tiny creature bubble up to the top of a pond, I couldn't help but remember this book and its ice cream eating oviparous mammal. So the story goes, that a rabbit finds an egg, but can't for the life of him figure out what sort of creature hatched out of it.

When they arrived, the egg had hatched. There stood the strangest animal that ever was!

"He doesn't look like any animal I have ever seen before", said Rabbit. "He has a big beak and little webbed feet just like Duck."

"He has a tail and a fur coat just like Beaver," said Mrs. Hen. "And he is very shy, like Squirrel." "What are you, my dear?" asked Mrs. Hen.

But the roly-poly animal said, "I don't know." Then splash, kersplash! that roly-poly animal jumped into the river and swam right down to the bottom.

Needless to say, the rest of the book is spent trying to figure out just what in the blazes the thing is, and as is always the case in misadventures like these, it takes wise circus folk to figure it out. I can't recommend this book enough based on shear cuteness alone. Really, anything Richard Scarry breathed on is gold as far as I'm concerned, but Rabbit and His Friends in particular stands apart from the rest. Check out scans of the whole book at this amazing blog called Golden Gems that highlights Little Golden Books and more. Awesome!

Also by:
I Am a Bunny
Chipmunk's ABC
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The Great Big Air Book
The Bunny Book
Richard Scarry's Best Rainy Day Book Ever
Tommy Visits the Doctor

Great Monday Give: House is a House For Me

And so the holiday officially begins... To kick it off in style, the Great Monday Give for this week is an excellent hardcover, like-newish copy of one of my son's faves, A House is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman. Great book. Great story. Great illustrations. All you have to do to be entered to win is comment on this post before midnight ~ Sunday, December 7. The winner will be announced the following day.

Last week's give of The Story About Ping was selected using the highly scientific and accurate blond scroll and point method and will be taken home by Elena. Congrats!

Jack Kent's Twelve Days of Christmas

Jack Kent's Twelve Days of Christmas
Jack Kent ~ Parent's Magazine Press, 1973

Another reminder that the entire backlist of Parent's Magazine Press should be reissued post haste, this 12 days is similar in vein to Hillary Knight's 1980 version in that they both collect all the gifts from each verse... meaning by the end you are looking at 12 pear trees, 22 turtle doves and so on. What really brings this book to life is that although the only words are the traditional lyrics, the Mr. Kent lends a tremendous amount of personality to the characters through their actions and facial expressions, so much so that it takes the story in a whole new direction. By the last page when "my true love" has driven the girl of his dreams away will his overabundance of booty, the fear in the sweet girl's eyes says everything about the (sometimes) hilarity of unrequited love.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me twelve ladies dancing, eleven lords a-leaping, ten drummers drumming, nine pipers piping, eight maids a-milking, even swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four collie birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Just in case you are wondering, I Googled and apparently "collie" is the British and correct way to say the bastardized "calling." Who knew?

Mr. Kent's illustrations are so full of spark and humor, it is easy to understand why his first book Just Only John is highly collectible. And the only reason you've never seen it reviewed here is that I sadly and personally do not own it, but as expected, I am off in search of it now. To the library and beyond!!!!!

Also by:
I Was Walking Down the Road
The Grown-Up Day
The Fox and the Crow
The Biggest Shadow in the Zoo
The Animobile Book
Jack Kent's Book of Nursery Tales
Dooly and the Snortsnoot
Mr. Meebles
Cindy Lou and the Witch's Dog
Clotilda
The Blah
Jack Kent's Valentine Sticker Book
The Bremen-town Musicians
Round Robin
Just Only John
Fly Away Home
Fat Cat
Piggy Bank Gonzales
Socks for Supper

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