baby jesus beautiful photos: Angela And The Baby Jesus

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Angela And The Baby Jesus Biography
The author Frank McCourt reminisces about one incidence from his mother - Angela's childhood when she was six years old. Most of the stories that we have read so far on Christmas theme are written with either the Christmas eve or the Christmas day in focus but this small book is very different.
It happens a few days before Christmas. Baby Jesus is already in the Limmerick Church where little Angela gets to see him - an infant in the crib but what makes her heart sad, very sad is the fact that little Jesus is lying in the crib in cool, wet, dark December nights without any cover or blanket to keep him warm. She wonders why nobody thought of keeping the baby Jesus warm and so she decides to take this task upon herself. She thinks of a plan to take the baby home with her and keep him warm and cosy. But materialising the plan is not going to be easy when there are a whole bunch of hurdles on the way - she has to keep her plan a secret, she has to pick the baby when the Church is empty, she is aware that stealing is bad thing and she could get punishment for stealing the baby. No matter what, Angela is convinced, she is determined, she has to take care of poor and cold Jesus because she knows how it is to be cold in these chilly nights. Now carrying the baby in her arms, she has to be extra careful. She surely cannot enter her home through the main door which means she has to climb the backyard wall with the baby. She is in despair and asks the baby for help and she does get the help. She is told in her head by the Jesus - "throw the baby over the wall and recover him on the other side". She throws once, she throws twice but her attempts are unsuccessful, finally in third attempt he goes over but a very terrible thing happens this time, he lands in the wrong backyard. Angela now talks to the baby very sternly and asks him to cooperate and not fly like angles so that he is warm soon. This time baby Jesus obediently obeys the instructions and lands in the right courtyard sporting the same smile on his face all through. She heaves a sigh of relief but the trouble is not over yet, her brother Pat comes out in the backyard and starts questioning her. What would Pat tell the mother and how can Angela still manage to keep the Baby Jesus safe and warm with her on this chilly December night? Who would assure her that the baby is safe? You must read to know the following sequence of events.
Frank McCourt, an author par excellence has an unparalleled ability of weaving extra-ordinary tales from the ordinary situations. A very heartfelt tender story full of love and emotions that is sure to reach out to every little heart and tug some strings there. There are two editions of this book - one for kids and one for the adults. I picked up the one which is for the kids. The riveting drawings by Raul Colon, portraying Angela's emotions, are a treat for the readers to savor. Just the title page picture gives an idea what to expect inside the book."Angela" is Angela of McCourt's award-winning Angela's Ashes. There are two versions illustrated by different artists of this true adventure Frank McCourt's mother had as a little girl in Limerick, Ireland—one for adults, another for kids; I have the young(er) readers' edition.
The Sheehans would have been a traditionally religious working class family in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Catholic Ireland; Angela has learned their practices of piety, church, and caring for others—her distress about baby Jesus shivering in the nativity scene at St Joseph's parish forms the main idea of the book. Angela figures out a way to snatch the Jesus figurine from the manger, then carries Jesus to her home to warm and care for him; after she's found out, her siblings and mother go with her to return the infant to the church.
Frank McCourt's bland writing and the story line both disappointed me; nonetheless, Raúl Colón's superlative illustrations with their tertiary color palette and exquisite chiaroscuro play of light and shadow make this book a winner! I'm delighted to have another new-to-me book about God's incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth this Christmas season; subsequent readings of Angela and the Baby Jesus just may increase my appreciation for the story itself.
In terms of plain narrative, the Nativity story is hard to beat. It has pretty much everything: a journey, a baby, a mass murderer, refugees, the kindness of strangers, music, animals and big, big special effects. Picture-book artists have presented this story with originality and brio, from Dick Bruna and his squat, minimalist Holy Family to Julie Vivas and her realistically weary Mary.
Why is it, then, that so many picture books on the more general or secular themes of Christmas lack fiber? There is nothing remotely sappy in the original story, but legions of books featuring little angels and animals at the manger or anthropomorphized Christmas trees and indefatigable drummer boys fall flat. Perhaps Christmas simply provides too much material. The secular accretions of Santa Claus, figgy pudding and Suzy Snowflake are enough to make you look for inspiration in some less excessively explored holiday. Groundhog Day starts to look good.
One way around this problem is to focus on something elemental. Frank McCourt’s “Angela and the Baby Jesus” is built around the theme of cold. This family anecdote involves McCourt’s mother as a 6-year-old deciding that the infant Jesus figurine in the Christmas crib at church must be cold in his scant loincloth, then stealing hito take home to her warm bed.
Readers of McCourt’s 1996 memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” will remember his rare gift for entering the minds of young children. He captures the way they construct complicated plans and notions based on basic misunderstandings. He never lets his adult perception of their vulnerability get in the way of the pleasure he takes in children’scomplexity and sturdiness. In this small story he lets us know that Angela’s kind impulse is laced with naughtiness, sibling rivalry, attention-getting and a desire to escape the position of smallest in the family. Angela is endearing, but she is not cute.
The heist itself, which involves hiding in the confession booth and throwing Jesus over a backyard wall, is masterly and lively. The only hitch in the proceedings concerns Angela’s older brother Pat, who “was like a baby himself and often said foolish things even she wouldn’t say.” When Pat discovers Angela’s secret, he announces the truth to the family: “She have God in the bed, so she do.” But of course they don’t initially believe him. In this, Act 2 of the drama, the emotional heart of the story switches to Pat and his relationship with Angela. In Act 3, both strands, now tightly woven, come to a neat, unexpected, satisfying conclusion.
The liltincadence of McCourt’s prose — it having a bit of a rest you were?” “’Twas” — is matched by Raúl Colón’s watercolor-and-pencil illustrations, in a limited palette of blue and ochre. We move up and down stairs and streets, but we seldom stray from Angela’s viewpoint. The moonlit road home from the church is so long as to seem never-ending, the backyard wall is high as high, and when the twin forces of church and state confront Angela, the priest and the policeman are so tall that the tops of their heads are cut off the page. A message McCourt never makes explicit lies in the composition of the family scenes, the rounded sculptural figures echoing the solidity, formality and closeness of the manger crib.
Anticipating a crossover market, the publisher has also issued a smaller-format “adult” edition of “Angela and the Baby Jesus,” with illustrations by Loren Long (Scribner, $14.95). The tale is a natural for a seasonal family read-aloud (McCourt opens for Dylan Thomas), but the Long illustrations are dark and dreary, so you might as well stick with the picture-book version.
Kate DiCamillo’s “Great Joy” is also a story of cold, set in 1940s America.
Frances, who appears to be 8 or 9, looks out her apartment window to the street below to see an organ grinder and his monkey. She discovers that they sleep on the street and, concerned for them, invites them to her church’s Christmas pageant. During the play, Frances, who has the role of the angel who appears to the shepherds, chokes on her lines; but at the critical moment, when musician and monkey enter the church, she recovers, and the angelic announcement is made.
Memorable picture-book texts often emerge when two stories entwine. In “Angela” the story of Pat winds around the story of the liberation of the baby Jesus, giving it strength and universality. It is Ireland in the 1910s, and it is all other times as well. In “Great Joy” the two strands of the plot — pageant and organ grinder — don’t convincingly mesh, and neither has enough substance or originality on its own. To invite a homeless person to come in from the cold for a couple of hours is not a sturdy enough premise to justify the emotion the narrative seems to be asking of us.
This blandness and sentimentality is mitigated somewhat by Bagram Ibatoulline’s illustrations. His paintings, in acrylic gouache, portray people with very particular faces, and their gestures are meaningful and familiar. Frances stops to gather new-fallen snow on her way to church. Her mother steps gingerly on the slippery steps. He adds back-story details — a framed photograph of a man in uniform suggests a father away at war. And the concept of joy, which is not convincingly realized in the text, is made manifest in a personality-filled double-page spread that follows the final words. Ibatoulline depicts the church social after the pageant. One shepherd picks his nose, the camel (front end) emerges from his costume, the monkey sits on Frances’ shoulder and investigates her hair, and the organ grinder, illuminated by Old World charm, flirts with Frances’ mother.

Angela And The Baby Jesus