A Christmas Memory (by Truman Capote)

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.

This new 50th-anniversary edition of Truman Capote's 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 with a slight Southern lilt and a humorous enthusiasm.

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, 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. For today's children this is a glimpse of a world that is almost beyond imagination, and more compelling than fantasy. It is a sleepy book to be shared between adult and child. 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 trip to a time long gone.