When a classmate physically and mentally bullies Remy, the third-grader withdraws from friends and imagines the worst about his parents. Staring at the Christmas tree in the classroom enables the sharecropper's son to escape his poverty-stricken life and dream about opening a present on Christmas morning and having turkey for Christmas dinner, neither of which has ever occurred.
Friends blame the changes in Remy's behavior on Leonard's bullying and encourage Remy to talk to his parents, his teacher or his priest. Remy refuses, often with open hostility. As Christmas Day approaches, Remy's struggle to understand why he has so little and others have so much deepens. He concludes that Jesus is punishing him for hating Leonard and his bullying.
A bayou-laced, South Louisiana community comes together in 1952 to stop Leonard's bullying in a compassionate manner and open Remy's heart to the meaning of Christmas through love and forgiveness.
This is a delightful story of hope, perfectly timed for Christmas, from a fellow writer and blogger, Kittie Howard. Though the setting is a little before my time, Kittie's words transported me back to a time when I sat in a little classroom in a small village, at an ancient desk with an inkwell (that students found ingenious uses for) doing worksheets of sums. Ah, the smell of freshly sharpened pencils... (come on, I'm not the only one who loves that smell!).
What I enjoyed as well were the Author's Notes at the end of the +/- 14 000 word story, where Kittie shares a little about her life and the way things were back in 1952 that lead to the writing of Remy Broussard's Christmas.
In the spirit of #authorlove, it would be fantasitc if you would head over to Amazon to take a look at Remy and support a wonderful writer-blogger with a genuine and sincere heart.
6 comments:
OH I didn't know Kittie's book was out thanks for posting this; she is a terrific writer and I am sure this is a wonderful book; I do love the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil.
This sounds like a really sweet tale, I love to read about this period of time
Sounds like a wonderful read. And yes, I also love the smell of sharpened pencils. :-)
Wow! Thank you, thank you, Rachel! You're a real sweetie!
Sounds like a really lovely story.
Thanks for the review. :) It sounds like a great story for the holidays!
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