Angels and Other Strangers : Family Christmas Stories

Rating:
Summary: Simply Wonderful
Review: Once again Katherine Paterson wrote a book that's full of life and feeling and that fills your heart with warmth, love and care.

Rating:
Summary: Unfinished Christmas Gift
Review: Review of Katherine Paterson 1979 Angels and Other Strangers: Family Christmas Stories. New York:Harper Trophy By Pamela Wright, Ph.D. This book contains moving stories that might be a nice accompaniment to Christmas family devotionals. Some stories also might be a good selection for a mother-daughter reading group, provided the daughters are mature. Paterson's characters, though set in seventies America, pull us into their worlds: a confounded minister, a mother who has recently suffered bearing a dead baby, a young girl who isn't sure she likes her new baby brother, and Woodrow Kennington (child theologian), all exist like gameboard characters in various positions in relation to God. All are listening; it turns out, for that voice, that song, that metaphor which will draw them into His light. Unlike much of today's TV fare Paterson's stories do not always have pat resolutions. Instead, they teach those infinitesimally small movements in which God reworks human souls. Many characters are awkward Christians, doing good but not always knowing how to accomplish it without danger or distress. One minister's mother comes to babysit in the place of a young girl who is to play Mary in the annual church play. Her efforts at tending the young baby in the house initially provoke rage in the baby's mother. Yet this rage is smoothed out as are other difficulties of Paterson's characters, even though the total context which challenges their Christianity is not transformed. My favorite story "Tidings of Joy" is a story of a mother who struggles to explain to herself and her son the reason for her baby being born dead. It is her encounter with a creche that brings her some illumination which frees her from her agonized search for blame to a new understanding of how pain, death, and suffering touch us all. Smiles, in addition to these pictures of pain, also abound in "Angels". We warm to tough foster kids and a little girl named Elizabeth who's afraid she's going to be jailed for punching out her new baby brother. Paterson lived in Japan for many years asa missionary. She moves us Eastward to Japan in one story to remind us that the Christmas story can be told with love anywhere in the world, even in the face of persecution. Love rings round all these stories - in one story a father hunts for a lost son with the indefatigability of love to find the lost son is beginning responsible love himself. In another of these stories, a minister abandons the safe world of a mundane Christmas to search for a lost soul in a den of despair, even though his Christmas schedule is scuttled. To find this book you may end up in the juvenile section of your library or bookstore, which is where I found my copy. However this book is not for adolescent Christians but those for who mature enough to know Christmas is an unfinished gift. For these Christians we must not only receive the gift but accept the dilemma and hope that we incur in giving to others as we are given.

Rating:
Summary: Unfinished Christmas Gift
Review: Review of Katherine Paterson 1979 Angels and Other Strangers: Family Christmas Stories. New York:Harper Trophy By Pamela Wright, Ph.D. This book contains moving stories that might be a nice accompaniment to Christmas family devotionals. Some stories also might be a good selection for a mother-daughter reading group, provided the daughters are mature. Paterson's characters, though set in seventies America, pull us into their worlds: a confounded minister, a mother who has recently suffered bearing a dead baby, a young girl who isn't sure she likes her new baby brother, and Woodrow Kennington (child theologian), all exist like gameboard characters in various positions in relation to God. All are listening; it turns out, for that voice, that song, that metaphor which will draw them into His light. Unlike much of today's TV fare Paterson's stories do not always have pat resolutions. Instead, they teach those infinitesimally small movements in which God reworks human souls. Many characters are awkward Christians, doing good but not always knowing how to accomplish it without danger or distress. One minister's mother comes to babysit in the place of a young girl who is to play Mary in the annual church play. Her efforts at tending the young baby in the house initially provoke rage in the baby's mother. Yet this rage is smoothed out as are other difficulties of Paterson's characters, even though the total context which challenges their Christianity is not transformed. My favorite story "Tidings of Joy" is a story of a mother who struggles to explain to herself and her son the reason for her baby being born dead. It is her encounter with a creche that brings her some illumination which frees her from her agonized search for blame to a new understanding of how pain, death, and suffering touch us all. Smiles, in addition to these pictures of pain, also abound in "Angels". We warm to tough foster kids and a little girl named Elizabeth who's afraid she's going to be jailed for punching out her new baby brother. Paterson lived in Japan for many years asa missionary. She moves us Eastward to Japan in one story to remind us that the Christmas story can be told with love anywhere in the world, even in the face of persecution. Love rings round all these stories - in one story a father hunts for a lost son with the indefatigability of love to find the lost son is beginning responsible love himself. In another of these stories, a minister abandons the safe world of a mundane Christmas to search for a lost soul in a den of despair, even though his Christmas schedule is scuttled. To find this book you may end up in the juvenile section of your library or bookstore, which is where I found my copy. However this book is not for adolescent Christians but those for who mature enough to know Christmas is an unfinished gift. For these Christians we must not only receive the gift but accept the dilemma and hope that we incur in giving to others as we are given.

Rating:
Summary: This book kicks butt!!!
Review: This book was a very funny and distinguished. It had a whole bunch of bad language so I wouldn't share it with your younger children. It is a christmas book so it will have a whole bunch of little stories in it. The titles incluede Maggies gift and a lot of others. I really enjoyed this book, hope you do to!