Letters from Father Christmas

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The tone and content of the letters changes over time to reflect the children growing up, and Tolkien Father Christmas doesn’t shy away from mentioning the horrors of the world, including war and hunger. The letters incorporate aspects of the children’s lives and things they'd written to him, but there is some continuity in the stories of what FC and his elves etc get up to. Lovely illustrations, too. We went on to The Hobbit (see my review HERE), which I had disliked as a child, sowing the seeds of overlapping, but distinct reading tastes, that continues to this day. It also led my child to a world of like-minded friends at school, university, and beyond. A wonderful collection that spreads the Christmas cheer and is a real eye-catcher if you have the print edition. The perfect read for anyone enjoying the holidays and delighting in tales of mischief and the right kind of spirit for this time of year.

My child's purest inventions were Sitty the cat - for whom they tried to sneak real cat food into my shopping basket - and Sitty's friend, Ruffy the dog. Distinct personalities evolved, and we spent many hours creating, retelling, and reworking stories about them. The first letter is from 1920, the last one from 1943 (that ones written during the war were especially touching). All of them are charming and full of warmth and kindness.Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters" ". The New York Times. 7 December 2002. Archived from the original on 16 December 2012 . Retrieved 22 November 2012. I'd have questioned the premise that he needs or wants to make a profit, but my husband came up with an excellent answer: branding, licensing, and franchising. Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.

Can you imagine writing to Father Christmas and actually getting a reply? For more than twenty years, the children of J.R.R. Tolkien received letters from the North Pole - from Father Christmas himself! They told wonderful stories of mischief and disaster, adventures, and battles: how the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place, how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas's house, and many others. i. The Book of Lost Tales: Part One · ii. The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two · iii. The Lays of Beleriand · iv. The Shaping of Middle-earth · v. The Lost Road and Other Writings · vi. The Return of the Shadow · vii. The Treason of Isengard · viii. The War of the Ring · ix. Sauron Defeated · x. Morgoth's Ring · xi. The War of the Jewels · xii. The Peoples of Middle-earth · Index) · The 1939 letter has Father Christmas making reference to the Second World War, [1] while some of the later letters feature Father Christmas' battles against Goblins which were subsequently interpreted as being a reflection of Tolkien's views on the German Menace. [2] Publication [ edit ] When the last letter came around in 1943, the year Tolkien's youngest child Priscilla forgot to write to Father Christmas because she no longer believed in him, I cried so so so much. My dear Priscilla, Letters from Father Christmas. London: CollinsChildren'sBooks; Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Facsimiles of letters with envelopes, with three previously unpublished pictures)

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The Father Christmas Letters". The Tolkien Library. Archived from the original on 12 January 2013 . Retrieved 22 November 2012. Lettere da Babbo Natale è un libro breve ma intenso che raccoglie tante lettere scritte da Babbo Natale (nonché lo stesso scrittore) mandate ai figli. Ogni dicembre i tre figli di Tolkien ricevono puntualmente una letterina in cui Babbo Natale si confida, descrive l’anno passato, il Natale imminente e le sue avventure con tanti aiutanti tra cui l’Orso Bianco del Nord, gli Elfi della neve, gli Gnomi Rossi, gli Uomini-Neve, Elfo Ilbereth, Paksu e Valkotukka. Ripeto, non conoscevo questo titolo e averlo scoperto mi rende felicissima. Trovo che sia davvero un libro particolare e che la scelta dello scrittore sia stata davvero un’azione super bella: non è da tutti diventare Babbo Natale per i propri figli e renderli così felici in questo periodo magico. Per questo penso che sia un libro originale e magnifico, adatto sia ai più piccoli che ai più grandi. Un libro da leggere sia come libro della buonanotte per i più piccini o come libro di piacere per i più grandi. Perché una cosa è certa: anche se si è il Grinch, questo libro non può non far innamorare del Natale. And what years they were, the first of these being written in 1920. His oldest was then only three years old when he began writing these, and they were continued through for over twenty years. Even though Santa may live at the North Pole, he was not oblivious to the problems the world was facing, then, and there are some nods to the leaner years, where Santa may have sent fewer items than in the past since there were so many difficulties for other children in the world. At the same time, each letter contained enough charm, humorous events, and an occasional word from the North Polar Bear, Santa’s chief assistant.

As the letters were neither conceived, nor written as a consistent narrative, some criticisms can be levelled at Letters from Father Christmas. It has been said that the texts are too elaborate for children of the age still to believe in Father Christmas, even if read aloud by adults. But many of you have belied this, and the book has found an enthusiastic audience among many families. People have told us how they incorporated it into their family Christmases — reading the first letter on the appropriate day before Christmas to arrive at the last letter on Christmas Eve. Other families were inspired for a time to take up the game. In our own family, for a few years, Christopher wrote letters, and I drew pictures, for letters to be discovered by our children. J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892-1973) is the creator of Middle-earth and author of such classic extraordinary works of fiction as 'The Hobbit', 'The Lord of the Rings', and 'The Silmarillion.' His books have been translated into more than fifty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide. For reading at Christmas it is ideal, and if the children already know the secret, doing it as a family is also something fantastic.

Prior to publication, an exhibition of Tolkien's drawings was held at the Ashmolean Museum. These included works from The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and The Father Christmas Letters. I think the author needs no introduction. But this little gem of a book proves that the man didn't "just" invent Middle-Earth, the place of epic fantasy. No, he was a man with a great imagination in general.