Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that a child drinks a little whiskey, and lives with an assortment of relatives instead of with his parents. Otherwise there is nothing to be concerned about, and much to be enjoyed.
Families who read this book could discuss the unusual friendship. Why do Buddy and his elderly cousin have such a close friendship? Why do the adults treat her the way they do? Your children may also want to make fruitcake for their friends after reading it.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
This new 50th-anniversary edition of the delightful, poignant, and now classic story could not be more perfectly suited to the text. The delicate watercolor illustrations, taken from a 1989 edition, capture the understated gentleness of the story, while on the accompanying CD Celeste Holm reads the text in a warm, grandmotherly voice that is as intimate as a bedside story. She sounds just the way you'd imagine the old lady, never called anything other than "my friend" in the book, would sound, with a slight southern lilt and a humorous enthusiasm.
The story itself, more vignette than story, captures with great gentleness and fascinating detail a distant time of wood-burning stoves, chamber pots, open fields, and a slower pace. Even though not much happens, for today's children this is a glimpse of a world that is almost beyond imagination, further back than their parents' childhoods, and more compelling than fantasy.
It is a sleepy book to be shared between adult and child, snuggled up together in front of a fire with cocoa, or at bedtime. This is one of those stories they'll ask for every year, and you'll be glad to bring it out again and, curling up with a child you love, take a little trip to a time long gone.
From The Book
A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable -- not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"
Plot Summary:
Truman Capote recalls a Christmas past, when he was 7 years old and living with an assortment of relatives. One, a 60ish, rather childlike distant cousin, is his best, and only, friend, as he is hers. Each year they save up money to buy the ingredients they can't gather for free to make 30 fruitcakes, which they send mostly to strangers they admire.
Capote relates in some detail their four-day extravaganza of gathering, preparing, and baking, and the homely way they spend the holidays together. Includes a CD of Celeste Holm reading the story.
Related Books:
Classic Christmas Stories
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
A Christmas Carol: In Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens
A Newbery Christmas by Martin Greenburg, ed.
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffman
Amahl and the Night Visitors by Giancarlo Menotti
Angels & Other Strangers by Katherine Paterson
A Midnight Clear by Katherine Paterson
A Christmas Sonata by Gary Paulsen
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Christmas with Anne by L. M. Montgomery
What Child Is This? A Christmas Story by Caroline B. Cooney
A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill
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Violence |
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Social BehaviorThe old woman teaches the importance of giving, and the characters go to great lengths to make their gifts. |
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CommercialismMention of a Hershey bar. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoThe old woman gives the 7-year-old a little whiskey. |
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