Author: Rumer Godden
Illustrator: Christian Burmingham
First Published: 1958

Accompanied by Burmingham's lovely black and white pencil illustrations, Godden tells a Christmas story combining Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl and Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit. But with a happy ending.



Switching focus between the beautiful doll, Holly, who needs a child to love and cuddle, and Ivy, a lost orphan looking for a home, we spend Christmas Eve in the cold, lonely, but making wishes for a better life.

In the grand tradition of magic wishes, Ivy and Holly get their fondest dreams.

A well-told story with little plot threads coming together, the mark of a good author. The story is woven beautifully leaving an engaging tale that deserves to be a Christmas classic.

Age (taking into account comprehension, concentration, language):
Read aloud - 5+
Read yourself - 8+

References:
Rumer Godden on w'pedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumer_Go...
Christian Birmingham's website: http://christianbirmingham.com/

-CR-

This is exactly the sort of Christmas story I love to read. Full of wistfulness and longing-- and just beautifully told. If you're wanting to read it aloud with kids it will take about an hour. The illustrations by Barbara Cooney (known for Miss Rumphius, and Roxaboxen) are also incredibly lovely.

I love this book and I love Rumer Godden!

I loved this book! I'm a little torn calling it a traditional picture book though as there is a lot of text for little ones, but for older kids that can sit still, it is a delightful read.

Ivy is an orphan and sent away for the holidays to stay at another children's home. In transit, she gets the idea in her head that she has a grandmother, and that the town they are passing through is where her grandmother lives. She wanders the streets, spying a doll in the toy shop window that should be her doll.

The little doll in the window, Holly, knows that is her girl (dolls know these things, because they have a soul too). Through wishing, and a little Christmas magic, they get their happy ever after.

Sweet enough to melt the heart of a curmudgeonly atheist. Much honor to Godden's magic way with words, and Barbara Cooney's pictures certainly helped the edition I read.

A wonderful story to read to your kids at Christmas...reserve it at the library now! :)

A childhood favourite that I'd feared might be twee upon revisiting, but really, it's pretty good. Ivy is an unlucky but resilient child ("some people might have cried", Godden writes when she finds herself alone at dark in a strange town, "but Ivy was not that kind of little girl") who basically manifests a family into being through force of will. I remembered more than I'd realised, especially about the toy shop—scary stuffed owl Abracadabra, who seems to represent a kind of atavistic, primal force of bullying and cruelty, and the adorable toy hippopotamuses, Mallow and Wallow, with their grey velvet skin and pink velvet mouths, and the dolls left on the shelves all whispering "Wish. Wish." The prose is really well done, unadorned but effective. If I still worked at the bookshop I'd want to be sending this to children all December.

If the title of this book makes you think of "The Holly and the Ivy," that's not a coincidence; that's the name of a traditional British folk Christmas carol, an unabashedly religious carol dating from the Middle Ages.

Funny thing here, a sweet thing to me: Rumer Godden has written a Christmas picture books that is unabashedly -- though undercoverly -- religious. It's all written in secular terms about wishes. Although some readers will find remarkable lines buried in the rest of the text, such as:

They did not know that it is when shopping is over that Christmas begins.

Whereas so many Christmas picture books are supposedly about the religious holiday and the meaning of the season, when really the main message is about shopping or setting a perfect table, etc.

If you're familiar with novels by Rumer Godden you will expect the writing to be superb. And you won't be the least bit disappointed. In particular, the transformation of Mrs. Jones is a wonder to read.

FIVE STARS for a suspenseful-and-sacred Christmas story, with magnificent illustrations. This story brought tears to my eyes and joy into my heart. You know, Goodreaders, it might do the same for you.

My 7 yr old daughter and I loved reading this book together. We both couldn’t wait to see what happened. Magical experience. Christmas book treasure status for sure.

What a beautiful story! It's a new-to-us favourite. I'm so glad we bought a hardcover version for our family.

Read with my granddaughter - a sweet and happy Christmas story for all ages!

The Story of Holly and Ivy, illustrated by Adrienne Adams.

I have always loved Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy, a delightful little Christmas tale in which a lonely doll named Holly, and a lonelier orphan named Ivy, find one another and a home, all thanks to the magic of the season. But as I was rereading it this Christmas Eve past, it suddenly occurred to me that this wasn't the story of two lonely souls, but of three. Which, if you've read the book, might seem obvious. How odd that, as a younger reader, I breezed on past Mrs. Jones, and her quiet longing for a child, concentrating more on Holly and Ivy, whereas this time around, Mrs. Jones' narrative seemed particularly poignant to me.

It's a testament to Godden's skill as an author, I think, that this brief early reader/chapter-book - only sixty-four pages - can feel so fresh, after being read so many times, and still have something new to offer, upon each successive reading. The illustrations in my vintage edition were done by Adrienne Adams (as opposed to the more recent version with artwork by Barbara Cooney), and have a soft, dreamy quality that greatly enhances the charm of the story. I think my favorite is the end-paper illustration, with the bare tree standing in the village square!

All in all, The Story of Holly and Ivy is a sweet little holiday tale, one I would recommend to little girls who love doll stories, to young readers who enjoy magical Christmas adventures, or to Adrienne Adams fans.