Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey ANNOTATION
The widow McDowell and her seven-year-old son Thomas ask the gruff Jonathan Toomey, the best wood-carver in the valley, to carve the figures for a Christmas creche.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A woodcutter's wounded heart is healed and his faith is restored through a joyful miracle in this holiday classic. Over 600,000 copies have been sold. Includes a free cd recording of the book.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Now with a new cover and new size (8 11/16" x 7 7/8"), The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (1995) by Susan Wojciechowski, illus. by P.J. Lynch, pairs what PW's starred review called an "elegant, poignant" story, about the spiritual reawakening of a bitter man, with richly detailed watercolors of an early-American setting.
Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot
The story of Jonathan Toomey, a widower who has withdrawn from the world, only to be brought back to rejoin life by a widow and her son, is a true Christmas treat. The touching story is made more poignant by Lynch's illustrations. His opening pictures of Toomey reveal a man in the shadows-grumpy and sad. As he and the young boy spend time together, the colors lighten and life brightens. A tour de force by author and illustrator.
BookList - Hazel Rochman
"Christmas is pish-posh," grumbles Jonathan Toomey, the best wood carver in the valley. He's a Scroogelike recluse; but he's a gentle grouch, it turns out, and he hides a sad secret. He's transformed, not by Dickensian ghosts, but by an eager seven-year-old boy and his widowed mother who ask him to make them a Christmas creche. The story verges on the sentimental, but it's told with feeling and lyricism (he "traveled till his tears stopped" ). Lynch's sweeping illustrations, in shades of wood grain, are both realistic and gloriously romantic, focusing on faces and hands at work before the fire and in the lamplight. In a beautiful, elemental scene, the angry wood carver stands on the threshold of his home, disturbed by the gentle widow and her son who want his help and will transform his life.
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