Stephen Krensky

A little evergreen tree, somewhat hunched and missing a few branches, longs to be taken home from the Christmas tree lot by someone who loves the holiday as much as it does in this sweet seasonal tale from author Stephen Krensky and illustrator Pascal Campion. As the other trees on the lot disappear, our arboreal hero keeps hoping, until eventually it stands alone—the last tree, solitary and forlorn, offered to the public for free. Snoozing in the falling snow on Christmas Eve, it is show more unprepared when someone arrives who does indeed love the holiday as much as it does...

Picked up on a whim from the Christmas display in my public library's children's room, largely because I was drawn to the cover, and to the hint of melancholy in the title, The Last Christmas Tree pairs a heartwarming story with bright, colorful illustrations. Stories about evergreens and their experiences as Christmas trees are not so uncommon in the world of children's letters. From stories like Ursula Moray Williams' The Good Little Christmas Tree, in which the eponymous arboreal hero attempts to provide all the holiday delights for its family, to Annie Silvestro's The Christmas Tree Who Loved Trains, about a pine tree with a fondness for locomotives, such stories abound! That said, Krensky's tale was the first I've seen in which a tree is selected by Santa, specifically because both hold Christmas in their hearts. In any case, I found the conclusion here very sweet, and thought that the artwork, created digitally, captured the sense of motion and the frenzy of colors and lights around the tree, both when it was standing still, and when it was also in motion. Recommended to picture book audiences who enjoy holiday stories about homeless creatures finding a home and a happy ending. show less

This book is appropriately shelved in the "Holiday" section of my local public library because it is much more holiday fable than history. It is two fables in one, first a story of a Polish soldier at Valley Forge celebrating Hanukkah, and then the Hanukkah story that the soldier tells to a passing General Washington, which improves the general's mood somewhat.

I checked it out for the illustrations by Greg Harlin, which are very good. There are nine very wide landscape paintings which occupy show more all of one page and over half of its opposite page as well as two instances where there are separate paintings on each page. Where the story is about Valley Forge, the page background is blue and conveys a wintry feeling; for the Hanukkah story the page background is warmly golden as befits a sunny, mostly desert country.

One page depicts a battle between the continental army and the British regulars, the next page depicts the Greek soldiers facing off against the rebellious Maccabee army. Because this is a children's picture book, the battle scenes are dramatic but carnage-free. There is a great deal of attention to period detail, as is characteristic of Harlin's work, but the soldiers in both illustrations are cleaner and more uniformly dressed than they would have really been.

In one painting, Harlin uses shading to juxtapose the present with the past. General Washington is sitting down opposite the Polish soldier; in between the two foreground figures in full color is an image of the recent past in muted browns and yellows only as the soldier hopefully steps off a ship seeking a life free of religious persecution.

When I was young, I believed that all of the stories of the Old Testament came from a pre-historic past. But the story of the Maccabees is from a thousand years after the story of Moses. In this time, the empire of Alexander of Macedon had fractured into several fragment empires which fought among themselves as well as against the encroaching power of Rome in the West and various enemies in the East. The Hanukkah story, although wrapped up in legend, is also definitely part of history, as is the story of Valley Forge.

I think that the illustrations of the Hanukkah story are, perhaps, not so historically accurate as the illustrations of the Valley Forge part. The Greek soldiers in the battle scene are correctly depicted, I think: the cavalry lack stirrups, the infantry are wearing linen body armor and carrying the very long pikes that soldiers in the Macedonian army would have carried. But in the scene in which some Jews are being forced to worship a Greek deity, the soldiers are wearing uncovered metal armor which seems an impractical choice given the blazing sun. The illustrations of the Greek sculpture are good, but the victorious Jews are depicted dragging a slightly broken sculpture of Athena out of the Jewish temple. Why Athena? The only explanation I can come up with is that the most famous of all Greek temples, the Parthenon, was dedicated to Athena, and the illustrator thought that young children might be familiar with pictures of the Parthenon sculpture.

On the other hand, the Valley Forge illustrations are as close to reality as practicable in this story book. The soldiers are ragged. The small fires do not look like they yield much warmth. General Washington is either powdering his hair or wearing a wig and he wears the pale blue sash which distinguishes him as the Commander-in-Chief.

I enjoy the extraordinary occurrences of legend. Even the most mundane and convenient things like the goats of Thor, which Thor can slaughter and eat every evening, but which come to life the next day to pull his chariot, are pretty exciting. But miracles, the suspension of the natural law by a serious god for some divine purpose, never thrill me. In the Hanukkah story, the oil for keeping the candles alight lasts 8 times as long as it would have without a miracle. This is a shop keeper's dream, and not very glorious to me. If only the same were to happen to my natural gas supply this winter, that would really be worth celebrating.

While this story has no very strong support in the historical record it is true in spirit. George Washington was brought up in a Christian household and knew his Old Testament; he would have readily seen parallels between the story of the Maccabee rebellion and his own. Thomas Jefferson wished to put an image of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to escape the Egyptian army under its tyrant Pharaoh on the Great Seal of the United States. Clearly he saw a Biblical parallel in the revolt of the colonies and their establishment of a separate country.

And finally, it is notable that an organization of Jewish businessmen sent a letter to the Constitutional Convention asking, politely, that the framers refrain from making them second-class citizens in the new country by establishing a national religion which would, perforce, exclude them. There is no test act in the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights includes an article prohibiting the establishment of a national religion. So our possibly apocryphal Polish soldier was permitted by law to practice his religion in peace, assuming he survived the war. show less

A fictionalized account of true events, Hanukkah at Valley Forge is the story of a meeting between General George Washington, surveying his troops at their camp in Valley Forge, in December of 1777, and a solitary Jewish soldier, observing Hanukkah in his hut one bitterly cold night. Curious about this ritual he had interrupted, Washington asks the soldier - an unnamed Jewish immigrant from Poland, and a passionate believer in the American cause - its meaning. The story which the soldier show more unfolds, about the ancient struggle of the Maccabees to liberate Israel from the rule of a far-off king, and the miracle which followed, strike a chord with the general, giving him faith that America too will triumph...

Although it is impossible to know whether the events chronicled here actually unfolded as described, or what effect they had on George Washington, we do know that he encountered a Jewish soldier at Valley Forge, and heard an explanation of Hanukkah from him. He said as much, a year later, when a guest at a dinner given by Michael Hart, a Jewish merchant then living in Eaton, Pennsylvania. This interpretation of that statement, by Stephen Krensky, while perhaps not factual, in the strictest sense of the word, strikes me as being true, highlighting the similarities between two very different struggles for freedom. The accompanying watercolor illustrations, by Greg Harlin, have a lovely, luminous quality to them, and are well suited to both stories unfolded here - the one from ancient times, and the one in 1777.

All in all, Hanukkah at Valley Forge is a lovely little book, which I would wholeheartedly recommend, not just to young readers celebrating Hanukkah, but to those with an interest in American history. show less

As a grandmother of a two year old who is about to have a baby sibling I was looking forward to reading this book. It did not disappoint. It talks about the feeling of jealousy when the baby gets all the attention, but then shows the big brother doing things with the baby and being proud of what he can do and eventually teach his little sister. The story itself is simple and short so that young children will not lose interest. The illustrations are cute and child friendly. I would recommend show more this book to any families where there is a new baby on the way.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. show less