Back to the Future: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas: A Visit to St. Nicholas illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith

"'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS... "

So begins America's favorite holiday story poem, composed for his own children by Clement C. Moore in 1822. First printed in the local newspaper and then picked up by other publications and reprinted in school readers, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" eventually found its way into picture book format. Now each fall publishing season features several special new editions of Moore's text, done up in many styles, cartoons, parodies, and gorgeous, full-color form in which famous illustrators compete to find new and creative ways to portray that famous midnight intruder who never fails to leave filled stockings "by the chimney with care."

Forthcoming early, with plenty of time to order for the holidays is Houghton Mifflin's revised and new edition. For this one the publisher echews the current crop of artists in a return to the past, back to the 1912 edition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (Holiday Classics) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), featuring the vintage artwork of the illustrious turn of the nineteenth-century illustrator, Jessie Willcox Smith. Smith, known for her work on several classic children's books, was a student of Howard Pyle, noted for his heroic illustrations in The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Sterling Unabridged Classics) and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Sterling Unabridged Classics).

For Clement C. Moore's classic, however, artist Jessie Willcox Smith avoids the heroic, picturing her St. Nicholas faithfully as a "jolly old elf," half the height of the father who cautiously observes him, indeed plump and elfish, with stumpy legs and elfin brown fur garb without white trim, with pointed cap unadorned by the usual fur pom-pom atop it, more a rotund Brownie than super-sized benefactor. Artist Smith's scale is modest as well, with a plain brown fireplace from which hang ten, well-worn socks, in varying sizes, from a string across the fireplace front. The children nestle, several to a bed under flowered quilts, and Papa in his nightshirt and cap emerges, a little disgruntled, from his canopied, side-curtained bed to peer out the mullioned window-paned shutters at St. Nicholas landing noisily on his lawn.

Santa's reindeer and sled are miniature, as Clark describes them, dwarfed by his huge, cram-jammed toy bag, and this Santa has to look way up as he confronts Papa in the hallway. Smith's vignettes are set against bright white pages, centered like medallions, but not without jolly details of St. Nicolas's largess spilling from his pack. The Saint departs in an appropriately snow-decorated scene flanked by frozen evergreens, under a full yellow moon as expected, but eschewing the sight of saint and sled actually taking flight. Smith sets her text in centered paragraphs with large, red initial capitals, and adds decorations in the form of a red-beribboned girl saying her prayers on the first page and a tiny red-overalled bear adorning a small round box on the final page.

All in all, Jessie Willcox Smith's version of this classic holiday story is a lovely choice for holiday reading and gifting, child-sized and child-friendly, and a nice addition to the holiday book shelf.

Once More Down the Chimney : The Night Before Christmas illustrated by Holly Hobbie

It is a blue and silver midnight, snow settling over a long and low log cottage and bare trees. Only a lonely snowman and a prowling red fox stand watch to witness a flash in the sky and a sleigh descending on that low rooftop, the lead reindeer just swerving to miss the chimney.

Inside the mice are sleeping, and so are the children, one toddler and two sisters and a brother, in their cozy room, while dad is just shedding his robe and slippers to slip in beside his sleeping wife.

The sudden clatter above wakes the snoozing cat; the toddler sits bolt upright between his sleeping siblings, eyes wide; and Dad dashes to the window, tugs it open to peer out and is chilled by a swirl of snowflakes invading the bedroom.

Followed by the curious cat, the toddler in his little drop-seat footie sleeper pads down the stairs carefully, while Dad, believing he is the only one up, flattens himself against the dining room wall as someone emerges from the fortuitously unlit fireplace, a someone in a long, fur-trimmed red robe and black boots.

In disbelief Dad runs his hands through his already disheveled hair, and the tot and cat are astonished at what they see going on beside their tree. Only the cat approaches the midnight visitor, tail up, to get a treat.

Yep. It's A Visit from St. Nicholas, all right, no doubt about it!

Veteran illustrator Holly Hobbie has a freshly-conceived and illustrated version of The Night Before Christmas (Little Brown, 2013) which supersedes her 1978 effort in more ways than one. As the author admits, "The prospect of illustrating a long-revered classic is intimidating--all the more daunting because it has been celebrated by such a wide spectrum of accomplished artists. I wanted mystery and wonder-- a fresh perspective to the tale. Here's a child who gets to see the unseeable!"

And readers get to see it through the eyes of that small child (and Dad, the designated necessary narrator) in a beautifully conceived and executed version of Clement Moore's poem, one altogether in a league with all those "accomplished artists" who have gone before. Hobbie's setting is a more modest, Norman-Rockwellian one than most: no elaborately decorated Victorian mansion like Jan Brett's, no folkloric colonial house like Tomie de Paola's, no stately early nineteenth-century burgher's home such as Dan Santore's. Hobbie creates a comfortable house somewhere between all the others, one furnished solidly with a retro-styled sleigh bed for parents who don't need a kerchief or cap against the cold, a home decorated with a few hand-knit, homemade adornments and a touch of hand-me-down antique furnishings here and there. The toddler himself is at the center of this retelling, his body language, his surprise and wordless wonder telling the tale visually and well.

Hobbie's watercolor, ink, and gouache artwork in full-page, double-page, or spot vignettes paces the story perfectly, done with tasteful palette and keeping the inevitably adorable qualities of the little eyewitness a bit understated. A treat for the eyes and the heart, helping Clement Moore's magical story come alive once more in an admirable new edition.

On the Night Before Christmas: How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? by Jane Yolen

On the eve of the big day, there’s no mother’s child who never gets hyper, antsy or wild. So what does a dinosaur do when it’s time to nestle snugly in bed?

DOES HE EAT ALL THE COOKIES LEFT OUT FOR ST. NICK?
DOES HE GIVE ALL THE CANDY CANES ONE SLOPPY LICK?

It’s that time of year when kids alternate between being angelic and slightly crazed, and in Jane Yolen’s and Mark Teague’s latest saurian saga, How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? (Blue Sky Press, 2012), those dino kids are shown doing all those wild and crazy things inspired by the season. As in all of their elegant etiquette lessons, unusual dinosaur juveniles are shown, potentially doing all the things that no one wants them to do at the holiday season–dumping the contents of the stockings on the floor, breaking the ornaments and knocking down the just-decorated tree. Is that how a dinosaur should say “Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad”?

Of course not.

HE CAROLS WITH CARE.
HE HELPS TRIM THE TREE
SO NO BRANCHES ARE BARE!

And when it’s about time for Santa to come to town, he goes up to bed with nary a frown. And when Santa’s sleigh lands and the snow lies deep, he’s upstairs in bed and sound asleep. At least, that what good little dinos do in the latest of Yolen’s How Do Dinosaurs...series, as told in Yolen’s meter-perfect verses and Mark Teague’s delightful illustrations, which show unusual dinosaurs (such as a gorgeously red and green feathered gigantoraptor) and which, as always, provide the name of each ditzy dinosaur concealed somewhere in the large two-page spreads for sharp-eyed kids to spy out, as well as reprised in their dinosaur-studded endpapers.

After many titles in their trademark series, Yolen and Teague have not lost their touch. How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? offers a subtle exposition on the right way to do St. Nick and Mom and Dad proud on Christmas Eve. “Uproarious hypotheticals,” as Publishers Weekly succinctly puts it

For a dynamic dino drama duo, pair this one with Yolen's and Teague’s brand-new companion book, How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah? (Blue Sky Press, 2012).