9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For the child in everyone., 23 Aug 2001
By A Customer
Read this book in December, when you're fed up with the commercialism of it all and re-capture the magic you felt as a child. It's magical, enchanting and it certainly appealed to the child in me. The clever layering of stories - Joachim in the present and Elisabeth as she makes her journey through time - keeps the brain engaged. But this book is about more than that - despite being built around the Christian Christmas story, it's really about light, hope and joy and a reminder that not everything is about jingling cash tills. A book to treasure.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Advent story since Dickens, 23 Dec 2000
By A Customer
If you want to put some Magic into a child's Christmas, get this book and read it, one day at a time: It is the best Advent story since Dickens.
This year I did just that - for myself, and the feelings, of warmth and excitement generated made the darker days of winter a little lighter. Like the little boy in the story, I wanted to know the ending, and like the boy, I didn't want it to end.
Each 'chapter' is given a date, starting on the first day of December. There are 24 chapters, and, as it opens - like a flower, or like detective story - new ideas, new questions and new meanings are given to what has almost become a cliché, the Christmas Story and the power generated by it.
You cross Europe, you cross history. You are involved in serious questions - that of refugees, and of lost children, and of power - issues presented in a way a child can start to make sense of if presented in this simple, but not naïve, way.
I am not, by the way, a Christian: Nor am I a child. But I really enjoyed this book.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful pre-Christmas read!, 28 Nov 2003
This review is from: The Christmas Mystery - abridged illustrated edition: abridged edition (Paperback)
A friend lent me this book a year ago. It captures the meaning, feel and child-centred innocence of Christmas like nothing else I have read. This year I have my own copy, and have ordered a second copy to read to the Year 5 class that I teach. The chapters are titled as days in December, so it makes a perfect advent read. My wife and I also intend to read it to our children as a preparation for Christmas. The only 'problem' with the book is that it's so tempting to read more than one day's worth at a time. A wonderful, magical book which actually gives you that Christmassy feel that so many of us lose when we get older!
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