Picture book Advent is going strong! Since I usually don’t have a whole post worth to share about a single picture book, I’ve decided to do a wrap-up post each Monday with quick notes on each of the preceding week’s picture books.

Christmas, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney: a retelling of the Nativity story, with excursions into the origins of various Christmas customs: Saturnalia as the source of the Lord of Misrule, Odin walking the world morphing into St. Nicholas giving gifts. (Hadn’t heard that one before!)

The Remarkable Christmas of the Cobbler’s Sons, written by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Barbara Cooney: an unexpected gem! Left alone on Christmas Eve, the three sons of a poor cobbler are visited by an incredibly grumpy elf/gnome-type creature who kicks them out of bed and makes them turn cartwheels - only for oranges and Christmas cookies and gold and silver coins to pour from their pockets! Delicious. A new story to me, and I’ve read so many Christmas stories that it’s always impressive to find something new.

I Saw Three Ships, by Elizabeth Goudge. Actually not a picture book, but a novella for children, a quick charming story about young Polly in a seaport who insists to her elderly aunts that they have to leave the doors unlocked on Christmas Eve for baby Jesus. The aunts refuse, but Polly manages to open a window regardless, and of course quasi-magical Christmas happenings follow.

An Angel in the Woods, written and illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop. Another banger in the vein of Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus. A toy angel, left on the windowsill with a candle on Christmas Eve, flies into the woods to bring presents to the animals.

The Animals’ Santa, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. More Christmas presents for the animals! One thing I love about Brett’s illustrations is that you often have the main story in the big illustrations, but also a little B-plot taking place in the borders. In this case, the main story is the animals discussing who might be the animal Santa (a bear? A moose? A wolf?), while the side story features adorable little mice in little red hats and green sweaters making little Christmas presents using forest goodies like acorns.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, illustrated by Jan Brett. The main illustrations are the various presents for the twelve days of Christmas (the seven swans a-singing etc.), while the borders show the tale of the singer and her true love heading into the forest to get a Christmas tree, then decorating it with her family. So charming. Each border has “Merry Christmas” in a different language, and then the illustrations reference that national theme, so for instance on “eleven pipers piping” the language is Scotch Gaelic and the pipers are bagpipers in kilts.

Christmas Folk, by Natalia Belting, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Did you know that Christmas also used to be Halloween? Okay, not exactly, but Christmas used to be the holiday where people got dressed up in costumes, went door to door demanding sweets, and set off fireworks, all customs that Belting describes in this story. (Cooney’s firework illustration includes a little girl with her hands over her ears. What a great detail!)

A couple of recent-ish theater reviews! We went to the Civic Theater production of Young Frankenstein, which surprised me by being a musical, although it probably shouldn’t have as the Mel Brooks movie => musical pipeline is well-established… anyway, this was tons of fun. Catchy songs, great singers, all the actors seemed to be having an amazing time. I think Elizabeth (Frankenstein’s girlfriend who ends up with the Creature) stole the show, but really everyone was fantastic.

Also, we went to see The Snow, which I approached with trepidation, as it was part of the same theatrical season that included Horse Girls.

But I really liked it! In The Snow, a village has been buried in snow, and young Theodore gets a bright idea: why not use a catapult to fly to the other side of the snow to try to find out what’s going on? “But snow doesn’t work that way,” you object. Listen. Snow just works that way for the duration of this show. Don’t worry about it.

This show is very funny, sometimes quite darkly so, as when a doughty band of heroes join Theodore to be catapulted over the snow, only to discover that catapults do still work more or less as expected and if you catapult across the snow without having planned for a soft landing, well… the heroes break Theodore’s fall, is what I’m saying.

There’s also a wonderful bit where one of the three narrators goes rogue. Theodore (who was by the way played by a very short girl) and his one remaining companion (the tallest guy in the play) have gotten trapped in a cellar, and the narrator intones, “The situation was hopeless.”

“What?” objects Theodore. (Theodore’s companion does not speak, but looks aghast.)

“The little one died first.”

“Hold on!” cries one of the other narrators, as the other reassures the audience, gesturing at the rogue narrator, “He’s still in training… only ever narrated tragedies before…”

Then Theodore and companion escape by baking a giant loaf of bread that forces the cellar doors open.

But it’s also a play with a lot of heart, and a completely unsubtle message about how We Can Solve Problems If We Work Together. You might expect the dark humor and the earnestness to work against each other, but somehow the balance is just right so that they work together instead, demonstrating perhaps that we CAN Work Together Despite Differences: the dark humor ensures the earnestness never feels treacly, and the earnestness ensures the dark humor doesn’t feel cynical.