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This is my book groups' Dec. selection. We will read it and discuss it.It is a wonderful Christmas story.
I received my copy of this wonderful book for Christmas when I was an exchange student in Great Britain in 1977. I have loved the story ever since, and try to read it aloud every year. This edition has beautiful woodcut illustrations which enhance the story and seem to really embody the spirit of the work.
My goodness, these illustrations are ugly. They completely detract from the beauty of the language. Either read it out loud to a blind person or stick with the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.
there are firemen and candy cigarettes, useful presents and useless ones. The youngest of children love it.
" I ordered earlier this year, arrived in my mailbox, this week, and I was really pleased to lay eyes them. With this short story in verse, acclaimed Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) exhibits a fierce mastery of imagery that reaches into his own beginnings in seaside Swansea to pull out Christmas reminiscence that, among other things, speaks of snowballs, sleeping uncles, wind-cherried noses, and "cats that slink and sidle over white back-garden walls." The three copies of this version of "A Child's Christmas.
Some will find that even listening to the tale is "too much like work." Dylan Thomas does roll on.There's little punctuation, so, I suggest practicing before reading aloud, but do read it aloud. I was a little disappoionted that the booklet no longer comes with the coordinating envelope that has made it so perfect for "gifting" for so many years, but the texture of the paper that covers the book, and Ellen Raskin's woodcut illustrations still set this publication in a class by itself.I highly recommend this version of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" as a wonderful read and a choice gift.
It isn't for everyone. And, why not.
lots of merriement for young and old.
So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness.My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps.which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOLThe sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.gbg
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