Robin S Christmas Journey

An adventurous and moving Christmas story about a brave little mouse.

Beautifully illustrated and exquisitely musical, Tidings is a poem to be read out loud and cherished. ‘Come with me to St Pancras Old Church, on a little London hill...’ It’s Christmas Eve and on this enchanted night Charoum, the Angel of Silence, can speak. As night turns to day, he unfolds a resonant story of a little girl, a homeless man and a fox... In the tradition of Charles Dickens and Dylan Thomas, Tidings takes us on a journey into the heart of Christmas, showing us celebrations down the ages and across the globe – as dawn sweeps from East Australia to Bethlehem, from London to the Statue of Liberty in New York. This is Christmas in all its magic, reminding us that it is a time not only of good tidings, but of loneliness and longing, compassion and connection.

This bedside story celebrates the warmth of the holiday season with a family whose children share the Christmas' past of their parents through the magic and wonder of a special candy cane. This December bedside story and all the stories are written to further the imagination of children and to strengthen the parent and child bond through the sharing of heartwarming, silly, absurd and believably impossible tales.

In this important and timely study Murray Knowles and Kirstin Malmjkaer examine the work of some of our most popular children's writers, from this and the last century, in order to expose the persuasive power of literature.

Subway Music is about finding things Reynold Junker thought he had lost forever: his subway music and his name. Subway Music begins in a Manhattan hotel room the day after he and his wife celebrated their Christmas anniversary. She coaxes him into taking her to Brooklyn to see where "all those stories you tell all of the time about growing up" took place. As a certified Californian, that's the last thing he wants to do. Subways were then. Freeways are now. But they go. At Prospect Park he "finds" his father and learns about both courage and reverse prejudice-prejudice against his "Nazi" father. At Coney Island he remembers his Jewish best friend and futile attempts to convert him to Catholicism using the holy waters of Coney Island to turn him into a Jewish Cary Grant. At Kings Highway he visits the house haunted by his old ghosts. At the end of Subway Music he realizes that subway music and Brooklyn will always be as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the color of his hair. Being from Brooklyn was his fate. Being a Californian is just the way things sometimes work out.

Film plays a vital role in the celebration of Christmas. For decades, it has taught audiences about what the celebration of the season looks like – from the decorations to the costumes and to the expected snowy weather – as well as mirrors our own festivities back to us. Films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Home Alone have come to play key roles in real-life domestic celebrations: watching such titles has become, for many families, every bit as important as tree-trimming and leaving cookies out for Santa. These films have exported the American take on the holiday far and wide and helped us conjure an image of the perfect holiday. Rather than settling the ‘what is a Christmas film?’ debate – indeed, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are discussed within – Analyzing Christmas in Film: Santa to the Supernatural focuses on the how Christmas is presented on the deluge of occasions when it appears. While most Christmas films are secular, religion makes many cameos, appearing through Nativity references, storylines involving spiritual rebirth, the framing of Santa as a Christ-like figure and the all-importance of family, be it the Holy family or just those gathered around the dining table. Also explored are popular narratives involving battles with stress and melancholy, single parents and Christmas martyrs, visits from ghosts and angels, big cities and small towns, break-ups and make-ups and the ticking clock of mortality. Nearly 1000 films are analyzed in this volume to determine what the portrayal of Christmas reveals about culture, society and faith as well as sex roles, consumerism, aesthetics and aspiration.