Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

A December Filled With Poetry




Santa Clauses: Short Poems from the North Pole
by Bob Raczka
illustrated by Chuck Groenink
Carolrhoda Books, 2014

This is a very fun book.

You might have seen it reviewed (with a spotlight on the author) by Michelle at Today's Little Ditty. It's worth looking at again.

Bob Raczka Santa has written a haiku a day for the entire month of December, and they are collected here to give readers a peek into the secret life of Santa, beyond what we know of him in his workshop and sleigh. We get to know his love of nature, the way he and Mrs. Claus decorate for the season, and (through the illustrations) that he has a big orange cat that looks much like the one that lives in our house!

Buy a copy and make this a December tradition in your house! Maybe you could write companion haikus each day in December from the point of view of the elves or the reindeer!


Friday, October 25, 2013

Poetry Friday -- Halloween Night



Halloween Night
by Marjorie Dennis Murray
illustrated by Brandon Dorman
Greenwillow Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

I have a big collection of Night Before Christmas variants. What great fun it is to have one that is set on Halloween night!

It begins,

"Twas Halloween night, and all through the house
Every creature was stirring, including the mouse.

The walls were aflutter with little brown bats,
While hordes of black spiders crept out of the cracks.

By the fire in the kitchen, the witch stirred her brew;
To make it more smelly, she threw in a shoe."

There are zombies, mummies, green creepies, ghosts, and ogres all making preparations for the trick-or-treaters. When the costumed children show up, there's a moment when the whole book stands still, and the reader knows it could tip either way -- the kids come in...or the kids run away.

You'll have to read it to find out how it ends, but you'll want to read this one aloud in a darkened room with a flashlight at your chin.

Happy Halloween!



Irene Latham has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Live Your Poem... where she's celebrating her 1,000th post! Congratulations, Irene!


Friday, January 25, 2013

Poetry Friday -- It's Time to Say Goodbye




It's Time to Say Goodbye

When we met
we agreed
he would stay for
two weeks.
He was welcome --
so charming,
so fine.

Now it's been
a whole month.
He must go soon for sure.
But he fits now
into our
design.

He's charming,
eclectic,
bright spirited,
cheery.

We forget that
he's only
a pine.



© Mary Lee Hahn, 2013




Yes, it's true. Our Christmas tree is still up. It still makes us happy every day. It's time, though. We know it's time. We'll say goodbye this weekend.

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday roundup at The Opposite of Indifference this week.

Monday, December 24, 2012

An Elizabethan Christmas Greeting from Karen Cushman

We were lucky enough to take part in Karen Cushman's blog tour for Will Sparrow's Road. My student, "Suzy," who is Muslim, read the book and helped to prepare the questions for Ms. Cushman. (see blog tour post here and comment for a chance to win a copy of the book) When we received the following information about Christmas in Elizabethan England, Suzy naturally had questions about Muslims in England at that time. Ms. Cushman graciously sent this addendum to her description of an Elizabethan Christmas:

Alexander Ostuzhev as Othello, 1935

Will Sparrow’s Road takes place in England in 1599, during the reign of Elizabeth I. There were very few if any Muslims in England at that time. Shakespeare was familiar enough with Muslims to include such characters in The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and Othello, which featured a Moorish Othello as its title character. It is said these plays were inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to England about 1600.



So now is come our joyful'st feast,
 
Let every man be jolly.
 
Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
 
And every post with holly. 
Though some churls at our mirth repine, 
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
 
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
 
And let us all be merry. 
(George Wither—16th c. poet)

 
Imagine a Christmas without a tree, colored lights, Santa Claus, presents, or Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Even without these joys, the Elizabethan Christmas revels were the highpoint of the year. After the sad, solemn, sometimes violent reign of Mary Tudor, Englishmen were ready for gaiety. And Elizabeth, relieved to find herself queen and not martyr, marked her reign with joy, luxury, and extravagance. Her people, starting on Christmas Eve and culminating twelve days later on Twelfth Night, celebrated Christmas with gusto.

Villagers and nobles alike decorated their homes with holly, ivy, yew, bay, laurel--in fact, anything still green. A large log, the Yule log, was brought in and kept burning in the hearth throughout the twelve days of the holiday.

Someone would be chosen as “The Lord of Misrule” and would be in charge of organizing the entertainment and revelry for the Twelve Days of Christmas. There would be dancing and play-acting and the singing of carols. Groups of girls and boys would go round their village or neighborhood with an empty drinking cup, begging for each house to fill it with spiced ale or cakes or a silver penny. It was bad luck to refuse.

Food was the highlight of the celebration. Turkey had only been introduced into England from the Americas during the reign of Henry VIII and was relatively uncommon. Goose was more traditional. It is said that in 1588 Elizabeth I ordered the entire country to serve goose at their Christmas feast, since it was the first meal she had eaten following England's victory over the Spanish. The very rich might serve peacock—skinned, cooked, and put back into its skin and feathers. The poor, of course, ate whatever they could.

Other goodies included wild boar, minced meat pies, plum porridge, and a Christmas pie of birds' tongues, eggs, sugar, lemon and orange peel, accompanied by a beer brewed especially for the occasion. During the Elizabethan age water was not considered fit to drink. Instead, beer was the staple drink for the majority of people, and it was common for country homes to house their own brewery. Mulled wine might also be served as well as syllabub (spiced milk with rum or wine) and lambswool, made by heating cider, sherry or ale, spices, and apples until the apples exploded into a foamy, white head.

The last night of the Christmas celebrations was January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, which commemorated the coming of the Three Kings. Twelfth Night festivities were often the grandest of the year, filled with balls and parties. A special cake would be baked and given out to members of the family and household. This cake would contain a bean and whoever found it would be pronounced King of the Bean.

Whether or however you celebrate Christmas, I wish you great joy of the season and a splendid new year.

-- Karen Cushman

Thursday, December 06, 2012

'Tis the Season


Glitch (The Aldo Zelnick Comic Novel Series)
by Karla Oceanak
illustrated by Kendra Spanjer
Bailiwick Press, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

There's definitely more than a little GLITCH in Aldo's plan to get more presents for Christmas this year!




Pete the Cat Saves Christmas
created and illustrated by James Dean
story by Eric Litwin
Harper, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

In this take-off of The Night Before Christmas, Pete the Cat leaves the beach where we left him in his Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, and steps in for a sick Santa to save Christmas.




It's Christmas! (I Can Read Book 3)
by Jack Prelutsky
illustrated by Marylin Hafner
Greenwillow Books, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

A dozen very accessible poems cover Christmas from the decorating to the present of a sled in a year with no snow.




Adventures in Cartooning: Christmas Special
by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost
First Second, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

Santa's nostalgic for the olden days when kids got toys for Christmas instead of electronics. With the help of the dragon and the knight from the first book, Santa delivers a book to all the children that makes them want to turn off their screens and draw comics...and of course, that is the book you just read!

Monday, December 24, 2007

A Couple More Reasons To Go To The Health Club On Christmas Eve

1. Need I say more?

2. They have this promotion going to help us keep exercising through the holiday season/month of December: Get 15 punches on your punchcard and you're entered in a drawing for I don't even know what, because just getting those punches is INCREDIBLY (ridiculously) motivating. December 24 and 26 are THREE POINT DAYS! (It occurred to me while swimming that they probably made them 3 point days to lure in more members and make it worth it to pay the poor employees who have to work those two days.)

3. The soprano in the church choir was practicing her parts for the Christmas Eve service...in the shower...at the health club. It was a little startling at first to be serenaded by angels in that venue, but it was really quite delightful once I got used to it.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Three Months From Today

Christmas.

The catalogs have started to come. The displays are starting to edge out Halloween and dwarf Thanksgiving.

And the Christmas books are rolling out, beginning with
Great Joy
by Kate DiCamillo
illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
review copy compliments of Candlewick Press

This is a simple story of a girl who wonders about and worries about the organ grinder and his monkey who show up on the corner of the street below her window. She questions her mother, Where do they sleep? How do they stay warm?, but her mother is too busy getting the girl's angel costume ready for the Christmas play to give her a satisfactory answer. On the way to the church for the Christmas play, the girl puts a coin in the organ grinder's box and invites him to come to her play. The story holds its breath when the little girl takes the stage to deliver her angelic lines. She surveys the crowd, but does not see the organ grinder. When he enters the church, she shouts, "Behold, I bring you tidings of Great Joy!"

Like I said, it's a simple story. It's a story that mirrors the story of the Nativity -- of the poor outcasts who are invited to be witnesses to the Great Joy. Of the angel who invites all to share in the joy.

The illustrations are what gives this book layering and depth. The setting is WWII. You can see it in the cars, the hair and clothing styles, the fact that there are no young men in the church. The girl's father is in the Navy. His picture is on the dresser. (Is his absence the reason Mother is distracted?) Every picture in this book glows, is radiant, is luminous. Every face in this book is a particular face, every person seems to be caught mid-gesture. After the story is over, you can't help yourself -- you go back and look at the pictures, again and again.