The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals. These shifts don’t follow a rigid sequence, and seasonal details in décor (several crèche scenes, stockings, trees, and even a menorah on the mantelpiece in the evidently bicultural urban home) offer additional visual interest. In keeping with other versions, parents are depicted as the “I” of the text, and Long maintains his commitment to inclusion and diversity in their characterization as he switches among settings to show them encountering Santa. The “right jolly old elf” himself is decidedly elfin, with a diminutive stature, and presents White with a ruddy complexion. It’s refreshing to see artistic acknowledgement of Christmastime outside of snowy, rural, Rockwellian settings, and the endpapers show characters to be as diverse as their homes: an interracial sibling pair decorates a tree a child who appears Black drafts a letter to Santa two brown-skinned children draw a large fireplace scene and three White-appearing children, one using a wheelchair, make cookies. Long’s central artistic conceit is revealed at the bottom of the picture, where he establishes four settings that Santa visits: a cityscape, a farm, a trailer park, and a palm-tree–dotted neighborhood. The illustrations’ soft style establishes an old-fashioned look. Flying reindeer pulling the sleigh break the cover’s right edge, leading into the book. Nick driving his airborne sleigh against the full moon. You can find the full text here.A visual treatment of an old poem that’s both nostalgic and fresh. So jump in your ‘kerchief, open your shutters and throw up your sashes, and give this little holiday poem a ripe rendition this year. Until that is definitely proven, you are allowed to always think of the neighborhood of Chelsea - just two blocks west of the Chelsea Hotel - every time you hear it. Given Moore’s original hesitation, some scholars have suggested that another New Yorker, Henry Livingston Jr., may have penned it. The poem was published anonymously the following year, and Moore would only take credit - at his children’s insistence - in 1844.
One daughter, Mary Ogden, would later produce the first of dozens of illustrated versions of the poem.Īt left: An illustration of Moore and his family from an edition published in 1896 ( source) I’m not certain how many were around to hear it in 1822, but Moore and his wife Catherine Elizabeth Taylor would eventually have nine of them. But the poem was only originally intended for Moore’s children.
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