Can you name these Christmas books?

October 24, 2006 4:05 PM

I'm trying to find the titles of a couple of books I read as a child, and both happen to be set around Christmas.

Book #1: There are a brother and sister (possibly twins?) who are Jewish, and there's some controversy because one of them wants to sing Christmas carols in the school choir. I don't think that's the main plot of the book, but that's the part I remember.

Book #2: There's a mute boy (named Jamie?) whose family is pretty poor. One Christmas, a couple comes to their house and they have no room in the house so the couple stays in the stable or something. The part I remember is that the kid got an orange for Christmas and was very excited about it, but he ended up giving it to the couple.

Hopefully these will ring some bells!

posted by srah to writing & language (6 comments total)

grace paley has a great short story called "the loudest voice" about a little jewish immigrant girl who gets a lead role in the school christmas pageant. it's been anthologized like crazy-- maybe that's what you're remembering as book #1?
posted by eve harrington at 7:25 PM on October 24, 2006

The second book is A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill. The first sounds familiar, I'll think about it some more.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:02 PM on October 24, 2006

Doesn't quite fit, but I wonder if the first could be Antonia Forest's "End of Term". The main characters are twins - Nicola and Laurie - and a friend, Miranda, is Jewish and can't take part in the Christmas play. There's a summary, with spoilers, on the Antonia Forest website.
posted by paduasoy at 1:58 AM on October 25, 2006

Thanks for your help! We're still not quite there on #1... I'm pretty sure the protagonist was a boy and it took place in modern times (well, maybe the '70s or '80s).
posted by srah at 3:48 AM on October 25, 2006

I've done some more searching on my own (pages and pages of Amazon listings for children's books involving the word "Christmas") and I'm thinking it might have been The Christmas Revolution.
posted by srah at 4:26 AM on October 25, 2006

The Christmas Revolution was the one I was thinking of.
posted by Margalo Epps at 2:19 PM on November 2, 2006