BookList - Carolyn Phelan
This Christmas anthology presents four stories and a closing poem by British writer Susan Hill, whose precise images, emotional resonance, and loving re-creation of traditional English life recall the writing of Eleanor Farjeon. Handsome woodcut illustrations, most of them very small, appear in black and white throughout the book, deftly setting the stage without defining the characters or action too much. The three longest stories "The Glass Angels," "White Christmas," and "King of Kings" as well as the poem "Can It Be True?" are available in many libraries as individual volumes with different illustrators. Still, larger libraries with a call for collections of Christmas stories may want to purchase this volume of beautifully written and often moving stories.