Description

The illustrations in [April Wilson]'s The Christmas Deer are eye - catching: naturalistic, with a wealth of added detail in the dorders, but here it is the unfolding of the story that caught and held my attention. The protagonist is a large reindeer, who wakes up one day to find his antlers hung with the shapes of animals, strung on emerald - coloured ribbons. After several fruitless inquiries, he encounters Owl, who tells him that the shapes will lead him on a strange journey: he has to seek out the corresponding animals and give that animal its shape (the act of giving acquires symbolic significance, brings peace, and establishes a sense of community). Strengthened by Owl's advice and direction (as the four children are by Aslan in the Narnia series), Reindeer sets off on an adventure that is both a quest for knowledge and a road to inner growth. I was so engrossed by Reindeer's transition from reluctant hero figure to true leader that I was somewhat disappointed when [Santa Claus] -- the instigator of the quest -- arrived on the scene at the end of the story, thus demoting Owl and Reindeer. Even then, I found the writing pleasingly evocative: "'Goodbye and safe return!'" cried the animals ... and they listened until the tinkling bells no longer whispered on the north wind, and the sleigh disappeared at last into the dark, dark night." Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories is no exception. As it turns out, we do not, in fact, spend Christmas with Anne, but with a host of other characters in the editor's selection of the fourteen "other" stories, which were originally published in newspapers and magazines around the turn of the century, and had since languished in one of [Lucy Maud Montgomery]'s scrapbooks. Only two of the stories (to justify the title) are excerpted from the Anne series. I could not find one spark of real creativity in any of the fourteen stories, which seemed to me to be a tedious procession of poor but virtuous families receiving a timely reward for their forbearance and selflessness, interspersed with equally hackneyed stories about wealthy yet essentially good - hearted families who need to be reminded that it is, after all, more blessed to give than to receive. Under the spell of universal goodwill, feuds and disagreements, often of long standing, are wiped out in an instant. Great friendships blossom or are renewed over the performance of some good deed. And all these scenarios seem to end with the same trite resolutions, which the characters vow to carry forward into the New Year., Source type: magazines; Object type: Article; Copyright: Copyright Canadian Review of Books Ltd. Dec 1996; DOCID: 418655291; PCID: 6208071; PMID: 54855; ProvJournalCode: BKCN; PublisherXID: CBCABKCN3756281, Source type: Electronic(1), http://search.proquest.com/docview/215189686?accountid=14670