Such an interesting take on the story of the birth of Jesus. Read this as part of a term project for a children's lit. class comparing this to Vonnegut's adult works. I think it really needs to be studied to be fully appreciated. Vonnegut truly captures the simplicity of how a newborn would look at a world full of things it did not fully understand yet, and the representation of different people in his life as different kinds of light is a beautiful idea. It explores the idea of sight as the most important way of understanding the world as an infant, focusing on light and colors, and uses these things to explore or explain the infant's relationship with the people around it as well.

Delightful as always, KV!

Vonnegut wrote a children's book about the first hours after Christ's birth - am I the only one who had no idea this existed? It's kind of amazing. Vonnegut had the illustrator, Ivan Chermayeff come up with the illustrations first, and then wrote the story around the pictures. It's all done in a very simple style and tells the story of what Jesus saw during the hours after his birth.

The concept is great, and, obviously, it's by Vonnegut so the writing is amazing. While the subject matter is definitely a departure from his adult works, the writing style is immediately recognizable as Vonnegut's. I loved that the style is so consistent with who he is as an author, despite the fact that he's writing for a younger audience.

This is definitely one that I'm going to be on the lookout for to purchase to read to Georgie and Gemma this Christmas. From what I can tell, it's still very difficult to find in print, but has been re-released as a Kindle book and is available for a very reasonable price.

I also managed to find this link to a YouTube video of Vonnegut reading the book himself that is definitely worth checking out.

Thanks to Edelweiss for providing me with a copy to review.