Our Children's Book Pick Of The Month Is...

The Tasha Tudor Christmas Book TAKE JOY! It's songs, stories, poems and things to do for a family Christmas.
I've been a collector of Tasha Tudor books for years and have seventeen in my personal library. My joy in collecting her books has been the search in Goodwill stores, at yard sales, and even at Christmas events. So, when Miss Norma, our Children's Librarian, selected TAKE JOY! as her December book pick, I was thrilled. And to think, it's a book I don't have in my library!
TAKE JOY! is a beautiful book from Tasha Tudor to everyone who loves Christmas. From a wide range of sources, this famous and beloved artist has chosen a richly varied collection of poems, carols, stories, legends, and even Christmas receipts (as she called recipes) and decorations.
The many full-color and black-and-white pictures in this book are aglow with the tenderness, reverence, and beauty for which Tasha Tudor's work is known. It's truly a book for all members of the
family.
Many people across our nation were saddened when Tasha Tudor died this year at the age of 92. She had been declared one of our National Treasures. She was a children's illustrator, whose pastel watercolors and delicately penciled lines depited an idyllic, old-fashioned vision of the 19th-century way of life she famously pursued -- including weaving, spinning, gathering eggs, and milking goats.
She frequently said that she was the reincarnation of a sea captain's wife who lived from 1800 to 1840 or 1842, and that it was this earlier life she was replicating by living so ardently in the past.
She lived in such a manner that she fascinated most people. She wore kerchiefs, hand-knitted sweaters, fitted bodices and flowing skirts, and often in the summer went barefoot. She reared her four children in a home without electricity or running water until her youngest turned five. She raised her own farm animals; turned flax she had grown into clothing; and lived by homespun wisdom: sow root crops on a waning moon, above-ground plants on a waxing one.
Named Starling Burgess, she later legally changed her names to Tasha Tudor. Her mother was a portrait painter and her father was a yacht and airplane designer. Her father nicknamed her Natasha after Tolstoy's heroine in War and Peace. This she shortened to Tasha. After her parents divorced when she was nine, she adopted her mother's last name of Tudor.
A cottage industry grew out of Tasha's art, which has illustrated nearly 100 books. Her drawings, particularly the early ones, often illustrated the almost equally memorable stories she herself wrote. Her family sells greeting cards, prints, plates, aprons, dolls, and more, all in a sentimental, rustic, but still refined style resembling that of Beatrix Potter.
For 70 years her illustrations elicited wide admiration. Two of her books were named Caldecott Honor Books: Mother Goose (1944) and 1 is One (1956). She often said her favorite of all her books was Corgiville Fair, one of several she wrote about the Welsh corgi dogs she kept as pets, sometimes 13 or 14 at once.
I'll continue to hunt for her books in strange places. But you can see the front cover of TAKE JOY! with a brief summary of the book in our lighted calendar case. Who knows...maybe you'll become a collector of her books also.