Angela and the Baby Jesus »

Frank McCourt was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education. He lives with his wife, Ellen, in New York and Connecticut.

#1 New York Times Best Seller LOREN LONG’s illustrations have received two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators and his first picture book, Angela Johnson’s I Dream of Trains, won the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Award for Illustrations and his inspired interpretation of Walt Whitman’s When I Heard Learn’d Astronomer was a Golden Kite Honor. A much sought after editorial artist whose work has appeared in Times, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and Atlantic Monthly, Loren is widely known for the illustrations in Madonna’s #1 New York Times Best Seller Mr. Peabody’s Apples. And Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could. He lives in West Chester, Ohio, with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons, Griffith and Graham.

"When my mother, Angela, was six years old, she felt sorry for the Baby Jesus in the Christmas crib..."

Frank McCourt's first Christmas book is by turns tender and heartwarming, and wholly unforgettable. Angela is six years old and worries for the Baby Jesus on the altar of St. Joseph's Church near School House Lane in Limerick, Ireland, where she lives. December nights are damp and cold, and the church is dark. The Baby Jesus' mother doesn't even have a blanket to cover him. The baby is sure to need Angela's help, even if she is not allowed to step near the altar, especially by herself.

Filled with the character and incident that have made Pulitzer Prize recipient Frank McCourt internationally renowned and beloved, Angela and the Baby Jesus is a timeless story of family -- and all of its joy, tradition, love, and incongruity -- and a book for the generations to cherish.

Publishers Weekly

Not one but two editions suffice to publish this sure crowd-pleaser by the celebrated McCourt, inspired by a childhood experience of the mother made famous in Angela's Ashes. The plot can be reduced to anecdote: six-year-old Angela worries that the Baby Jesus feels cold in the crèche at the church, so she devises a way to smuggle him home and warm him. In McCourt's hands, however, the story opens a child's view onto a vast world that takes scant notice of her, where "people passing by were not in the mood to be looking at a little girl carrying something white in the dark," and where she is considered too young to have anything of interest to say, even at home. Angela negotiates with unmistakably childlike logic: frustrated at her difficulty in getting the Baby Jesus over the garden wall (an improvised part of her scheme), she scolds him with empty threats: " 'Baby Jesus, I have a good mind to leave you there in Mrs. Blake's backyard.' But she couldn't. If God found out, he'd never let her have a sweet or a bun for a whole week." Rarely, McCourt risks inviting a laugh at Angela's expense (Angela continues, "You're not to be flying around like an angel"), but otherwise he brings consummate skill to his layering of different types of authenticity (in Angela's thinking, in the reactions to the inevitable discovery of the Baby Jesus), and evokes a potent mix of emotions.

Given a traditional storybook format and charged with illustrating a children's edition, Colón (My Mama Had a Dancing Heart) employs his signature, multi-step watercolor and lithograph pencil technique, patterning the colors and surfaces to suffuse the story with warmth and light. Theeffect stops just short of nostalgic, to hint at a timeless if imperfect past. Candles in the church, streetlamps, a barely seen fire in the hearth all bathe Angela in a steady glow that emphasizes the spiritual dimension of the story. No incidental players stroll into these scenes, and the focus remains on Angela; not even Angela's mother can be seen unobstructed.

Long, ranging far from his illustrations for The Little Engine That Couldand Toy Boat, interprets the story with an almost foreboding air, as if giving a form to Angela's trepidation and awareness of her own insignificance. The adult edition, produced in a small, square gift format, suggests the atmosphere of Angela's Ashes, beginning with the cover illustration of chimneys spewing smoke into an evening sky, and continuing with the stony palette of grays and blues rendered in grainy acrylics. Already dark pictures make dramatic use of shadow-sometimes to conceal, sometimes to announce a character's presence. Readers never see Angela's face, and most of the characters, too, are shown with their backs to viewers, sometimes from an even more distancing mid-air perspective. McCourt's humor seems harder to locate in this version; on the other hand, the tender ending comes as more of a surprise. All ages. (Nov.)