Rating: 
Summary: An old tradition
Review: Growing up, my father had a copy of the original vinyl recording of this from the 1950's. Every Christmas it came out and was played, and now I can't think of Christmas without it. After being unavailable for decades, I'm delighted to see this record once again available. Few people know that Dylan Thomas gained fame in his lifetime as a radio personality, and the dry, droll voice of his takes his fantastic prose and breathes a life into it that the simple words themselves cannot demonstrate. A classic, recommended to all.
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous voice
Review: I had read excerpts of A Child's Christmas in Wales and loved what I had read, but it wasn't until I heard the entire tale in Dylan's voice on NPR that I completely fell in love with it. Dylan's voice is warm, deep, slightly wry, and rolling.
If you haven't read it or heard it, it's a retelling of a Christmas past to a child. And it has the same questions and interruptions as you would expect from a small listener and has the same weight of an exaggerated epic that you might expect from a favorite uncle or father telling one of their "days of yore" stories.
I've been told that Dylan's largest fan base is in the U.S., and A Child's Christmas in Wales has the same charming humor and nostalgia that Rockwell's paintings and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days capture. An idealized notion of American middle class values, but a hint of self-mocking that keeps it grounded. I think he perfectly captures the expectations of Christmas and the feel of large family gatherings. A favorite bit in which he describes the Uncles who sit in the parlors and breath like dolphins and the pale little aunts that seem to accumulate at family holidays:
"Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Every time I read or hear it I get some deep-rooted domestic compulsion and feel the need run out and buy eggnog, knit something (nevermind the fact that I don't know how to), or find a rocking chair to sit on in front of a fire.
Rating:
Summary: Second graders from Eakin Elementary share their thoughts
Review: I liked the part where the cats were kind of crawling around and the boys were throwing snowballs at them and where Mr. Prothero was waving his slipper over the fire and he looked like he was conducting it. by Sybil LevineI liked the story when Jim's aunt came down and asked the fire men if they would like something to read. by Morgan Pitt I liked part where the two boys were throwing snowballs at the house and when the boys said "there might be trolls in there" and they said he reads too much. by Cydney Smith I like the part when Mr. Prothero said "a wonderful Christmas" and he fanned his slippers and they called the firemen and they tried to call the police and then "Let's call Ernie Jenkins. He loves fires." I also like when the aunt said, "would you like anything to read?" to the firemen. by Jonathan Gilbreath My favorite part of the story is when the firemen put the fire out and then Miss Prothero says "Would you like anything to read?" I also like the part where he describes the "crackling and carol-singing sea." by Ashley Fox My favorite part was when Mr. Prothero was banging on the floor with his slipper and when they called the fire department and the firemen were just done putting out the fire and then the aunt came and said, "Would you like to read?" by Harper Ganick My favorite part was when the kid was on the street. What you do is you take a cigarette out of a little box and wait until an old lady scolds you for smoking and then you eat the candy cigarette. by Davis Gooch
Rating:
Summary: The Best Christmas Book EVER.
Review: I really cannot say enough wonderful things about this book and the audio tape of Dylan Thomas reading it. My Christmas seasons have been enriched beyond measure since a loved one gave me this book. It is the most evocative and beautiful Christmas tale I've ever read and reading it aloud on Christmas Eve has become a beloved tradition in our family. It even inspired my husband and me to spend Christmas 2 years ago in the Cotswolds (England, not Wales... I realize), but we yearned for a more traditional "old world" holiday season and found it in the countryside not far from Wales. If you love the spirit of Christmas, this book is truly essential....such beautiful words with amazing soul, you will be enchanted.
Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: Just finished with the annual tradition of reading this fine work aloud to the whole household, & although Dylan Thomas's perfect (if sometimes tongue-twisting) prose cannot be improved upon, nonetheless, Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations do enhance the story, & make the Welsh poet's vivid reminiscences even vivider. A marvel of beauty, both lyrical (Thomas) and visual (Hyman); a joy to peruse. Make this edition of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" part of your collection, and part of your Yuletide tradition!
Rating:
Summary: More than a Christmas story.
Review: Scaring sleeping uncles by popping balloons. Getting a hatchet by mistake. Snowballing cats. Dylan Thomas has captured the perfect Christmas. Without any moral, very little plot, and a concern only for the child's perspective, this little piece sticks in my mind better than any other Christmas story I've ever read. Between drunk Auntie Hannah singing in the backyard and the haunted house down the streets where a group of mischievous carollers get the living hell scared out of them, "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is everything Christmas should be: funny, happy, poignant, a little sad, and fattening. Keep a bowl of candy nearby when you read it.
Rating:
Summary: An old tradition
Review: The poetry background of Dylan Thomas gives these reminiscences a certain lyrical quality: Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea." "But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards." And they are wonderfully evocative of his Welsh youth. But for me they also evoked another memory, of a trip that Bud Rouse and I made up to Saratoga. We visited friends of his who worked at the track and had a horse of their own (Double Russian was the name, if memory serves). We had fun at the races, hanging on the far side with all the Hispanic groomsmen and walkers and cussing out prima donna jockeys. And after dinner and a few frosties that night, our host took down a collection of Dylan Thomas poems and we took turns reading them aloud. It was precisely the kind of affected scene that you'd expect in a Manhattan novel or like something out of a gutter version of Jane Austen, but I'll be damned if we didn't have fun. The best, most treasured, books and writers of our lives become entwined in our existence in just such odd and unique ways. Then any time we encounter them again, they trigger a cascade of memories. For no reason that will ever matter to anyone else, Dylan Thomas is such a writer for me. But I think everyone will enjoy this short but terrific memoir. GRADE: A
Rating:
Summary: short but terrific memoir
Review: The poetry background of Dylan Thomas gives these reminiscences a certain lyrical quality: Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea." "But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards." And they are wonderfully evocative of his Welsh youth. But for me they also evoked another memory, of a trip that Bud Rouse and I made up to Saratoga. We visited friends of his who worked at the track and had a horse of their own (Double Russian was the name, if memory serves). We had fun at the races, hanging on the far side with all the Hispanic groomsmen and walkers and cussing out prima donna jockeys. And after dinner and a few frosties that night, our host took down a collection of Dylan Thomas poems and we took turns reading them aloud. It was precisely the kind of affected scene that you'd expect in a Manhattan novel or like something out of a gutter version of Jane Austen, but I'll be damned if we didn't have fun. The best, most treasured, books and writers of our lives become entwined in our existence in just such odd and unique ways. Then any time we encounter them again, they trigger a cascade of memories. For no reason that will ever matter to anyone else, Dylan Thomas is such a writer for me. But I think everyone will enjoy this short but terrific memoir. GRADE: A
Rating: 
Summary: Eloquent, poetic words; gorgeous pictures, but...
Review: This is as nice an edition of Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales" as it is possible to imagine. It is beautifully laid out, in a wide children's picture-book format, with colorful and evocative paintings by illustrator Christopher Raschka.
If you've never encountered Dylan Thomas' vision of his childhood Christmas in Wales before, you're in for a real treat. Boys chase each other through the snow; uncles repair to the drawing room lighting pipes; aunts offer Useless Presents such as mufflers long enough to swing from, and my favorite - the Prothero family's house starts to go on fire, which the gaggle of boys attempts to extinguish with snowballs.
It's clear that a poet wrote this; every word counts not just in the mental images it provokes but also in its glorious SOUND - please try reading it out loud; it is positively musical.
But - I confess the current edition seems mismarketed to me. It's not really a children's book, although older children, at least, may enjoy having it read to them. The picture-book format (and the above product info's insistence that the reading level is "4 to 8 years") might make you, the reader, think of it as a good Christmas present for the pre-school set. But the language is dense and unfamiliar to little ones (the uncles smokes 'briars' not pipes), and the text is longer than a little kid will sit still for (my 5-year-old for example).
I read it to my very attentive 10-year-old as well, and even he had trouble grasping all Thomas' delicious and metaphorical language.
So buy it; read it out loud to yourself in front of an evening fireplace, and Merry Christmas to you all.
Rating:
Summary: The best book of this story I have found.
Review: This is by far the best version of this story I have found. After examining the few illustrated versions of this wonderful Dylan Thomas masterpiece, this is by far the superior. The beautiful color and b/w illustrations complement Thomas'descriptive imagery. A great resource for the play/musical as well.
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