Good King Wenceslas

I love Tim Ladwig's beautiful illustrations. They bring this favorite Christmas carol to life, creating characters who live and breath. They capture the warmth of the king's castle, the icy cold of the winter landscape, the joy of the peasant family when the king and page pays their visit to bring them food, drink and firewood. I especially love the final scene of King Wenceslas smiling as he holds the peasant's cooing baby. Neale frames the text of the song with a little narrative about the real King Wenceslas, and the illustrations show a boy and his dog listening to a street musician in Prague in front of the statue of St. Wenceslas. The song then become the boy's imagined vision of the words the musician is singing. The page-boy in the illustrations of the song looks like the boy listening to the musician (and has the same dog) and the poor man gathering fuel looks like the musician. The book's final scene shows the boy bringing the musician a bagel and coffee, re-emphasizing the song's message of sharing. The book also includes a historical note at the end about the real Saint Wenceslas and the origin of the hymn.

Beautiful pictures. Uplifting story. Definitely for Christmas. So glad to have this book in my library of good books.

This book is beautiful, not at all as described above in the Review. The pictures are lovely. The book clearly shows a generous king looking out upon his kingdom, seeing a poor man and then calling his subjects to bring him items for the poor man. It shows how hard the journey is and at one point his page can go no further. It shows the heated footprints of the king for the page to walk in for warmth. At the end, the king saintly kneels at the bedside of this very poor man who doesn't even have a roof over his head and the man is smiling. I get teary on the last page. This is one of my all-time favorite books!

An excellent children's book of one of the greatest carols ever. This carol above all proclaims the social justice of the Gospel; the need to share what we have with others, even in the face of our own adversity, and at the loss of our own pleasure. It's only the more wonderful in that it's based on the story of an actual king, Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech Republic, who worked tirelessly for his five years in office to bring Christianity to his country of Bohemia. With very beautiful illustrations with a Gothic style of writing, the entire carol is included, a verse for each illustration, along with the notes at the end to sing along with. Children of about 30 should enjoy this work as well.

This a legend from my childhood, one of the many I was told nothin of. buy this one for your kids, so that they may know that wich I knew not.