In terms of plain narrative, the Nativity story is hard to beat. It has
pretty much everything: a journey, a baby,
a mass murderer, refugees,
the kindness of strangers, music, animals and big, big special effects.
Picture-book artists have presented this story with originality and
brio, from Dick Bruna and his squat, minimalist Holy Family to Julie
Vivas and her realistically weary Mary.Why is it, then, that so many picture books on the more general or
secular themes of Christmas lack fiber? There is nothing remotely sappy
in the original story, but legions of books featuring little angels and
animals at the manger or anthropomorphized Christmas trees and
indefatigable drummer boys fall flat. Perhaps Christmas simply provides
too much material. The secular accretions of Santa Claus, figgy pudding
and Suzy Snowflake are enough to make you look for inspiration in some
less excessively explored holiday. Groundhog Day starts to look good.One way around this problem is to focus on something elemental. Frank McCourt’s
“Angela and the Baby Jesus” is built around the theme of cold. This
family anecdote involves McCourt’s mother as a 6-year-old deciding that
the infant Jesus figurine in the Christmas crib at church must be cold
in his scant loincloth, then stealing him to take home to her warm bed.
Readers of McCourt’s 1996 memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” will
remember his rare gift for entering the minds of young children. He
captures the way they construct complicated plans and notions based on
basic misunderstandings. He never lets his adult perception of their
vulnerability get in the way of the pleasure he takes in children’s
complexity and sturdiness. In this small story he lets us know that
Angela’s kind impulse is laced with naughtiness, sibling rivalry,
attention-getting and a desire to escape the position of smallest in
the family. Angela is endearing, but she is not cute.The heist
itself, which involves hiding in the confession booth and throwing
Jesus over a backyard wall, is masterly and lively. The only hitch in
the proceedings concerns Angela’s older brother Pat, who “was like a
baby himself and often said foolish things even she wouldn’t say.” When
Pat discovers Angela’s secret, he announces the truth to the family:
“She have God in the bed, so she do.” But of course they don’t
initially believe him. In this, Act 2 of the drama, the emotional heart
of the story switches to Pat and his relationship with Angela. In Act
3, both strands, now tightly woven, come to a neat, unexpected,
satisfying conclusion.The lilting cadence of McCourt’s prose —
“Was it having a bit of a rest you were?” “’Twas” — is matched by Raúl
Colón’s watercolor-and-pencil illustrations, in a limited palette of
blue and ochre. We move up and down stairs and streets, but we seldom
stray from Angela’s viewpoint. The moonlit road home from the church is
so
long as to seem never-ending, the backyard wall is high as high, and
when the twin forces of church and state confront Angela, the priest
and the policeman are so tall that the tops of their heads are cut off
the page. A message McCourt never makes explicit lies in the
composition of the family scenes, the rounded sculptural figures
echoing the solidity, formality and closeness of the manger crib. Anticipating
a crossover market, the publisher has also issued a smaller-format
“adult” edition of “Angela and the Baby Jesus,” with illustrations by
Loren Long (Scribner, $14.95). The tale is a natural for a seasonal
family read-aloud (McCourt opens for Dylan Thomas), but the Long
illustrations are dark and dreary, so you might as well stick with the
picture-book version.GET THIS BOOK FREE.BUY SELL RENT BOOKS FROM THE LINK BELOW.