Gunhilde's Christmas Booke

Out sailing shortly before Christmas, little Gunhilde, her twelve older sisters, her parents the Duke and Duchess, and the family cook find themselves caught up in a storm, and then taken captive by a band of wild men in this rhyming holiday tale from author/illustrator Virginia Kahl. Thrown into a drafty dungeon, they mourn the fact that they will miss their holiday celebration, until Gunhilde breaks out her Christmas Booke, which documents all the customs the family observes at this time of year. While sharing this with their guards, the family convince them to become involved in those celebrations, from fetching a Yule log from the nearby forest to feasting on many delicacies. Won over by the Christmas spirit, the wild men release show more the family, urging them to return home to create the holiday in their own castle, so they (the wild men) can visit...

Published in 1972, Gunhilde's Christmas Booke was the fifth picture book featuring the Duke and Duchess and their thirteen daughters, following upon The Duchess Bakes a Cake (1955), Plum Pudding for Christmas (1956), The Habits of Rabbits (1957), and The Baron's Booty (1963). Like those earlier books, it features a rhythmic narrative told through rhyme, an amusing story pairing fairy-tale trappings with madcap antics and humor, and winsome vintage-style artwork done in black ink with a limited but attractive range of color washes. Virginia Kahl served as a librarian for the U.S. Army during the post-World War II period in Austria, and these books are inspired by that setting. This installment of the series, published almost a decade after the previous one, felt the weakest of the lot, not so much in story or illustration, but in the text, which sometimes stumbled, or had an awkward line. This surprised me, as the previous volumes boasted texts which were almost flawless, running along so smoothly that they tripped off the tongue. Here there were a few moments that felt like the rhyme had been shoe-horned in. That said, the book was still very appealing, and satisfied my desire for more about this unusual ducal family. I'd recommend it to fans of the earlier books, with the proviso that, while very good, it is not quite as outstanding as they are. show less