The Birds' Christmas Carol [Hardcover]

Kate Douglas Wiggin (Author), Jessie Gillespie (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

This classic Christmas story by the author of REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM features a child as memorable and charitable as Dickens's Tiny Tim. Born on Christmas Day, Carol is the Bird family's special Christmas baby. As her tenth birthday approaches, declining health threatens young Carol's life. Her only wish, however, is to plan an unforgettable Christmas celebration for the poor Ruggles children next door. Few characters have embodied the spirit of Christmas more fully than Carol Bird in this bittersweet holiday classic, which generations of readers have cherished for more than a hundred years.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A well-known Christmas story, first published in 1888, which has both humor and pathos." Wilson Children's Catalog

About the Author

Few writers have made such an impression on so many generations of readers as Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923). Ms. Wiggin spent her childhood in Hollis, Maine, a place very much like Rebecca's home. A devoted advocate for early childhood education, she, along with her sister, Nora, founded a school for kindergarten teachers, as well as the Salmon Falls Village Library, which still serves as the town library for Hollis.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395072050
• ISBN-13: 978-0395072059
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,274,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Birds Christmas Carol, a book for all generaltions, July 30, 2000

By 

Kathie - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Birds' Christmas Carol (Paperback)

I first heard the Birds Christmas Carol when I was in grade school a long time ago. Our teacher was new to the area and I think she read the story to us because there was a little girl named Peoria. I loved the story from the very start. A few years later my parents purchased a house to renovate and I found a copy of the book in the attic. This was about 1954 or so. The publishing date in the book I discovered was 1888. I treasured this book and read it every year right after Thanksgiving. It always brought tears to my eyes. After I married I thought I packed all my books and stored them in my garage. I really didn't have time to look for or read the book for a few years and one day my son and the littled boy next dood apparently were playingg with matches and burning pages of books in my garage. I was most upset when I felt my old copy of the Birds Christmas Carol was burned up. This was about 1970. Recently, my daughter was searching through some old books at my mothers house and what do you know. She found my cherished copy of The Birds Christmas Carol intact. I have purchased a new copy to read to my children but now I can read my original copy to my grandchildren. I will alway cherish the story.I will always cherich my first copy of it that I have recovered after all these years.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Put this one on your Christmas reading list, December 12, 2001

By 

Matthew Spady "800rsd" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bird's Christmas Carol (Hardcover)

This is one of the books my third-grade teacher read aloud to us after recess to ease us back into our afternoon studies. It took at least a week, perhaps two for her to work her way through the story, which many of us had not heard before (unless we had an older brother or sister who had heard her read it during a previous year and came home to retell it). Some of her book choices appealed more to girls, some more to boys, but this one, I remember distinctly -- more than forty years later -- kept all of us attentive.

The story, set in the 1880's, is simple: after several sons, a family finally has a little girl, who is named Carol because she is born on Christmas morning when the sounds of the choir singing a carol came floating in the window of the house. Sadly, she has an illness (unnamed) that the she and family must accept is incurable and will be fatal. Although she has just about every toy imaginable, and the continuous attention of her parents and older brothers, she longs to do something for someone else and decides, after a bit of thinking, to throw a birthday party (i.e., Christmas party) and invite the poor Ruggles children who live in the lane.

It can not be denied that the story is dripping with Victorian sentimentality and that Carol is almost too good to be true, nor can it be denied that it is effectively told and will touch all but the hardest hearts. The image of the Ruggles children wrapped in blankets while their mother washed their clothes in anticipation of the party is but one of the vivid vignettes in this delightful book.

Along with the Nativity story and "A Christmas Carol", put this on top of the list for holiday reading. As my third-grade teacher (long-departed) proved, this is a wonderful read-aloud story.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars tearjerker, December 18, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Birds' Christmas Carol (Hardcover)

To the world at large, Kate Douglas Wiggin is best remembered as the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903). But in the Judd household, we recall her as the author of the bathetic yuletide classic The Birds' Christmas Carol.

The brief novella tells the story of Carol Bird, a sickly little rich girl born on Christmas Eve. An impossibly good and generous child, she is inevitably doomed:

"Dear heart," said Mr. Bird, pacing up and down the library floor, "it is no use to shut our eyes to it any longer; Carol will never be well again. It almost seems as if I could not bear it when I think of that loveliest child doomed to lie there day after day, and, what is still more, to suffer pain that we are helpless to keep away from her. Merry Christmas, indeed; it gets to be the saddest day in the year to me!" and poor Mr. Bird sank into a chair by the table, and buried his face in his hands, to keep his wife from seeing the tears that would come in spite of all his efforts. "But, Donald, dear," said sweet Mrs. Bird, with trembling voice, "Christmas day may not be so merry with us as it used, but it is very happy, and that is better, and very blessed, and that is better yet. I suffer chiefly for Carol's sake, but I have almost given up being sorrowful for my own. I am too happy in the child, and I see too clearly what she has done for us and for our boys."

"That's true, bless her sweet heart," said Mr. Bird; "she has been better than a daily sermon in the house ever since she was born, and especially since she was taken ill."

"Yes, Donald and Paul and Hugh were three strong, willful, boisterous boys, but you seldom see such tenderness, devotion, thought for others and self-denial in lads of their years. A quarrel or a hot word is almost unknown in this house. Why? Carol would hear it, and it would distress her, she is so full of love and goodness. The boys study with all their might and main.

Why? Partly, at least, because they like to teach Carol, and amuse her by telling her what they read. When the seamstress comes, she likes to sew in Miss Carol's room, because there she forgets her own troubles, which, Heaven knows, are sore enough! And as for me, Donald, I am a better woman every day for Carol's sake; I have to be her eyes, ears, feet, hands--her strength, her hope; and she, my own little child, is my example!"

"I was wrong, dear heart," said Mr. Bird more cheerfully; "we will try not to repine, but to rejoice instead, that we have an 'angel of the house' like Carol."

"And as for her future," Mrs. Bird went on, "I think we need not be over-anxious. I feel as if she did not belong altogether to us, and when she has done what God sent her for, He will take her back to Himself--and it may not be very long!" Here it was poor Mrs. Bird's turn to break down, and Mr. Bird's turn to comfort her.

Having reformed her family, Carol determines to help out the poor but numerous Ruggles children who live in the carriage house outside her window. To this end she plans a Christmas Party for them and sacrifices her own gifts in order to buy them presents. But after this happiest day of her life, she passes away in her sleep as the strains of a neighboring church choir waft through her window. The Ruggles children are mortified that they may have caused her death:

Sadness reigned, it is true, in the little house behind the garden; and one day poor Sarah Maud, with a courage born of despair, threw on her hood and shawl, walked straight to a certain house a mile away, dashed up the marble steps and into good Dr. Bartol's office, falling at his feet as she cried, "Oh, sir, it was me an' our childern that went to Miss Carol's last dinner party, an' if we made her worse we can't never be happy again!" Then the kind old gentleman took her rough hand in his and told her to dry her tears, for neither she nor any of her flock had hastened Carol's flight--indeed, he said that had it not been for the strong hopes and wishes that filled her tired heart, she could not have stayed long enough to keep that last merry Christmas with her dear ones.

And so the old years, fraught with memories, die, one after another, and the new years, bright with hopes, are born to take their places; but Carol lives again in every chime of Christmas bells that peal glad tidings and in every Christmas anthem sung by childish voices.

I fondly recall my Mother sobbing through this chapter as Jeff Farris, one of the neighborhood kids who basically lived at our house, asked plaintively, "Are you going to stop crying long enough to finish this? I'll never find out what happened." (NB: Here's a special visual aid--to imagine this scene in your head, simply picture a small gang of urchins in a rice paddie surrounding a woman on the verge of a breakdown )

I don't know that I'd go as far as my Mom (see her review) and say that every holiday requires a sobfest, but it doesn't hurt for those of us with health and plenty to be reminded that we are pretty lucky. And even a certified curmudgeon like me still gets his heart strings tugged by this little tearjerker.

GRADE: B+