'TWAS IN, THE MOON OF WINTERTIME: The First American Christmas Carol

How Jesuit missionary Jean de Brebeuf brought Christ home to the Hurons by setting the story of His birth in their own language, placing it in their own northern woods and linking it to their god Gitchi Manitou--the result being the adaptation of a traditional French carol which supplies much of the text and is repeated, with a simple, singable arrangement and the Huron words, at the close. The paper simulates bark, the hand-lettered text an Indian picture-story (except that objects are named as well as illustrated) in the introductory, explanatory section--a feature that will be lost when the book is read to a group. And yet it's best suited to group use since the verses are less interesting in isolation than as adjuncts to the song. An imaginative teacher could make much of this--to the point of pantomiming the Indian nativity illustrated with quite becoming stylized simplicity.