An Advent List (reprise)

Last year I wrote an Advent list: the books my family will especially enjoy during December. In case you missed it, here it is again!

I love a good list. Elsewhere, I commented on developing rituals for Christmas; and I'm thinking that they will include a lot of good stories. So what follows is a dozen stories that my family will read aloud between December 1 and 24. Most of them are not Christmassy per se. Instead, they are about hope, joy, bravery, generosity, vocation, sacrifice, community, and love.

'The Singing Bus Queue' (Margaret Mahy, in The Chewing-gum Rescue and Other Stories (London: JM Dent, 1982)) sings rain or shine in seven-part harmony. No matter how hard the town grumps try to silence them, they continue to warble joyfully. Eventually, they are imprisoned for creating a public disturbance - yet even there they sing so sweetly, in such high and pure tones that the prison crumbles. They walk out through the ruins to sing through the night with the moon and stars.

Continuing the singing theme, in 'Four Angels to my Bed' (Joan Aiken, in Past Eight O'Clock: Goodnight Stories (London: Puffin, 1990)) Little John sees four angels carved on wooden bedposts. As he falls asleep, the angels sing him a fugue, and he joins his voice in a new tune that dances with, through and around the heavenly music. Downstairs, his mother smiles at the sound of her little John Sebastian singing as she realises he has discovered his calling.

'Brother Ninian's Blot' is also about calling (Robin Klein, in Ratbags and Rascals (Ferntree Gully, Victoria: Houghton Mifflin Australia, 1989)). Brother Ninian, a messy medieval copyist, spills ink across a nearly completed piece of parchment. In his horror, he tries to disguise the blot with doodles of leaves, flowers, birds, butterflies, and even a jolly abbot. He becomes completely absorbed, and in his absorption creates something wonderful, beautiful and entirely new: the illustrated manuscript.

The illustrated manuscript recalls Jane Ray's lavish illustrations in The Happy Prince: From the Fairy Tale by Oscar Wilde (London: Orchard, 1994). She retells Oscar Wilde's fairy tale in which the statue of a prince gives all it has to the city's poor - its ruby eyes, its gold leaf - via an obliging swallow.

On the theme of gifts, in 'The Gift Giving' (Joan Aiken, in Up the Chimney Down and Other Stories (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)) a blind grandmother can, with the help of a special tune played by her adult son, Mark, see and describe gifts and vistas in rich language. When Mark dies, the gift fades until Mark's nephew and namesake and Mark's daughter together make a new pipe and work out the tune that recalls Grandmother's gift.

Tomie dePaola has also written about gift giving between young and old. In Now One Foot, Now the Other (New York: Puffin, 2005), Bob teaches his grandson to stack blocks, tell stories and walk. When Bob has a stroke, it is the little boy who patiently teaches his grandfather to stack blocks, tell stories and walk again, using the same loving words his grandfather once used with him.

In a similar vein, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge lives next door to an old people’s home. He is particular friends with Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who has four names, just like him. Miss Nancy has lost her memory, and Wilfrid Gordon sets out to find it for her (Mem Fox and Julie Vivas (Gosford, NSW: Scholastic, 1984)).

Thinking about neighbours recalls Rose Meets Mr.Wintergarten (Bob Graham (London: Walker Books, 1992)). In this lovely book, a young girl moves into a new neighbourhood. When she loses her ball over the fence, her openness and fairy cakes disarm the miserly neighbour who has terrified the area’s children for decades.

Other misers are persuaded to share in Nail Soup (Eric Maddern and Paul Hess, (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007). A traveller, denied all but the meanest of shelter and sustenance, convinces his host that he will make soup out of a nail. As the 'soup' bubbles away, the host is gradually persuaded to add ingredients that turn it into a generous meal they can eat together.

The Mousehole Cat is also about sharing food. When a Cornish fishing villages faces starvation, Old Tom and his cat Mowser brave the winter storms to catch fish for the town. On their safe return, the town celebrates with a feast of morgy-broth and stargazy pie (Antonia Barber and Nicola Bayley (Aladdin, 1996)).

One of the most lively renditions of the Christmas story is by Julie Vivas (The Nativity (Gosford, NSW: Scholastic, 1986)). She illustrates the story in her singular style: the angel Gabriel is a ragged punk and shares a cuppa with Mary; we see the newborn baby, hands outstretched, still attached to the umbilical cord; the shepherds loom, peering into the cot; and in the final scene, Mary pegs out nappies. In Vivas's interpretation, the Christmas story is not a far-off super-spiritual event, but something immediate, physical, real, that happens even now. I particularly love that Mary is enormously pregnant, pendulous breasts and all, rather than resembling some medieval nymph.

Finally, what would an Australian Christmas be without a reading of Wombat Divine (Mem Fox and Kerry Argent (Scholastic, 2009))? Wombat desperately wants to be in the Christmas play, but he is too short, too clumsy, and too heavy for any of the parts. But Emu finds him the perfect role, and Wombat is, quite simply, divine.

As are all these stories. Read, prepare, enjoy.

PS For out of print books, try here.

Catch, Mr Wintergarten!

I’m a parent of young children. As any parent would know, young children like to read the same story over and over and over and over and over and over again. So it’s important for parents to decide exactly what books they are happy to read aloud approximately fifteen thousand times and then get them into the house. Conversely, they have a responsibility to their children and to themselves to divest themselves of the books they hate. There’s no shame in getting rid of a horrible kids book (even if it was a gift) because you loathe and detest the very sight of it. If you are troubled by the thought of chucking out (even ripping up) a book, let me reassure you. Some children's books are so truly awful that you are only doing the world a kindness by eliminating every last copy that you come across. They can be patronising, inept, humourless and utterly soul-destroying. Passing such books on, or even keeping them contained within your own four walls, is quite probably a sin.

What I want for my daughters are books which are funny, joyful, witty, thought-provoking and interesting. I want books with intelligent pictures, in which more is going on than is spelled out in the text. I want books which respect the reader, even if the reader is pre-verbal. With a bit of luck, a picture book will even include some precise terminology or archaic word - maybe capstan, vestibule, or cully - which will intrigue the reader, and help inculcate a love of language.

With these demands in mind, let us turn to the very first book to be reviewed here. In Rose Meets Mr.Wintergarten, a picture story book by Bob Graham, a young girl moves into a new neighbourhood. When she loses her ball over the fence, her openness and fairy cakes disarm the neighbour who has terrified the area’s children for decades.

The book is, of course, quite simply an illustration of Love thy neighbour. A most valuable moral, common to most world religions and ethical systems, and something I want my daughters to pick up. But unlike a 'Christian' storybook (most of which should be put through the shredder for their blatant moralising, patronising tones, paucity of imagination and sterility of language), this story is told for its own sake. It is genuine, authentic, and subtle. No moral is spelled out; the reader is not told the long-term outcome of Rose's actions. Instead, we have to work it out from the tone of the last page, and the illustrations on the end papers.

The illustrations are hallmark Bob Graham. Very simple, clean colours, and joyful subjects. A chicken pokes round a kitchen; a sheep sits on the roof; the girls have stripey stockings. Even these simple drawings, however, reward an attentive audience - my daughters were thrilled when they found a hidden crocodile in Mr Wintergarten's garden.

This is a book I have read out loud hundreds of times, and will always be happy to read again. I suggest you find yourself a three year old, and read it!

> Bob Graham Rose Meets Mr.Wintergarten (London: Walker Books, 1992).