cover image The Christmas Collection

The Christmas Collection

Jenny Thorne, Clarke Nora. Larousse Kingfisher Chambers, $9.95 (4pp) ISBN 978-1-85697-833-0

Like a Christmas stocking, this boxed set of four small books contains a happy assortment of pleasing surprises. Festive endpapers and holly-and-ivy-trimmed covers adorn each volume; within, delicate watercolors or cathedral-motif borders occupy margins, while welcome old chestnuts as well as worthy novelties comprise the contents. Christmas Traditions , although heavily weighted toward the publisher's original British audience (we hear much about the dessert preferences of legendary English kings and queens, Boxing Day, etc.), lightly wears its dense compendium of holiday lore. In Christmas Carols , out of the ordinary selections like Christina Rossetti's ``In the Bleak Midwinter'' relieve the familiar rounds of ``God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen.'' Similarly, standbys like ``The Twelve Days of Christmas'' accompany less predictable entries, including works by Tennyson and Kenneth Grahame, in Christmas Songs & Poems . The fourth book, The Christmas Story , interweaves Clarke's graceful retelling of the Nativity story with poems and prayers. Each book is only 24 pages long, but together the set conveys the holiday's diverse aspects. All ages . (Dec.)