Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Bayport Public Library | EASY CHRISTMAS MCC | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
They are ashamed of their antlers, until one Christmas Eve they prove helpful.
Author Notes
Geraldine McCaughrean was born in Enfield, England on June 6, 1951. She was educated at Christ Church College, Canterbury. She has written more than 160 books and plays for children and adults.
Her writing career includes the retelling of such classics as One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales, and The Bronze Cauldron: Myths and Legends of the World, which is a collection of stories from all over the world. She has received numerous awards including three Whitbread Children's Book Awards for A Little Lower Than the Angels, Gold Dust, and Not the End of the World. She also received the Guardian Prize and Carnegie Medal for A Pack of Lies, the Beefeater Children's Novel Award for Gold Dawn, the Michael L. Printz Award for The White Darkness, and the 2018 Carnegie Medal for children's and YA books for her middle-grade novel Where the World Ends.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Horn Book Review
The original reindeer doesn't like the crown of antlers the Maker assigns her (they look like a lopped tree). But generations later, antlers save the day when Santa's sleigh, pulled by reindeer, nearly falls through the ice. The book's title is misleading--this is really the story of how reindeer came to value their antlers--but the tale is fresh and the mural-like watercolor illustrations exquisite. From HORN BOOK Spring 2001, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A misleading title is the only stumble in this orotund, beguilingly illustrated original tale, a children's-book debut for Holland. In a vain effort to stop the newly created animals from quarrelling, an angel gives them all different sorts of crowns. Horrified by her knobby new headgear, proud Reindeer flees to the barren North to hide. A thousand generations later, only the reindeer are willing to help Santa haul his toy-laden sleigh--though in saving it from falling through a patch of thin ice, they shatter antlers, leaving only broken stubs. Santa offers them golden crowns, but in the end he bestows an even more glorious gift: one night each year they fly, and so "draw the Christmas sleigh not over snowdrifts and frozen lakes, but out across the night sky among the tinsel stars." Santa, the reindeer, the other animals, even the trees and rocks have a velvety look in Holland's framed, barrel-shaped paintings; the reindeer in particular, with their sheep-like faces and velvety racks, look almost huggable. A splendid holiday tale, at once grand and appealing--but not so much about how the reindeer were given their antlers, as how they came to be so proud of them. (Picture book. 7-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 6^-8. After the animals are made, they quarrel about who should be king, but an angel gives them all crowns: fur for the lion, a comb for the rooster, and antlers for the reindeer. The reindeer is horrified by her twisted, treelike crown and flees to the far north, where she and her descendants live for thousands of years. One winter day, a bearded fellow in a red coat turns up with a sleigh much too heavy to pull alone. Hoping Santa won't find them too ugly, the reindeer volunteer to help. When the sleigh slips on the ice, the deer use their antlers to save the day. Seeing the ruined broken antlers, Santa gives the deer a gift better than a golden crown: the power of flight on Christmas Eve. The pictures are clearly inspired by the theatrical masks and puppets that illustrator Holland works with; flat patterns and repeated shapes--hearts, diamonds, stars, etc.--are used to fine decorative effect. A pleasant holiday pourquoi story by the indefatigable McCaughrean, this makes a nice addition to the solstice canon. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
