The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (Penguin Christmas Classics)($17.00Value)

Description

One of six beloved Christmas classics in collectible hardcover editions L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus was first published in 1902, two years after his Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Drawing on the attributes of Santa Claus from Clement Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (“The Night Before Christmas”), Baum chronicles Santa’s life from his childhood in an enchanted forest—the same forest that is the source of all magic in the land of Oz—to his destiny of sharing gifts and spreading love to his fellow man. Along the way we witness him making his first toys, learn the origins of the Christmas tree and Christmas stockings, and discover the stories behind many Christmas secrets, like why Santa slides down chimneys, how he picks his reindeer, and how he delivers all his toys in one night. Later adapted into multiple animated films, and published here with the original illustrations from the first edition,  The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus  evinces the charm, warmth, and fantasy that made L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories American classics. Penguin Christmas Classics   Give the gift of literature this Christmas.   Penguin Christmas Classics honor the power of literature to keep on giving through the ages. The six volumes in the series are not only our most beloved Christmas tales, they also have given us much of what we love about the holiday itself.  A Christmas Carol  revived in Victorian England such Christmas hallmarks as the Christmas tree, holiday cards, and caroling. The Yuletide yarns of Anthony Trollope popularized throughout the British Empire and around the world the trappings of Christmas in London. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus created the origin story for the presiding spirit of Christmas as we know it. The holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott shaped the ideal of an American Christmas.  The Night Before Christmas  brought forth some of our earliest Christmas traditions as passed down through folk tales. And  The Nutcracker  inspired the most famous ballet in history, one seen by millions in the twilight of every year.   Beautifully designed hardcovers—with foil-stamped jackets, decorative endpapers, and nameplates for personalization—in a small trim size that makes them perfect stocking stuffers, Penguin Christmas Classics embody the spirit of giving that is at the heart of our most time-honored stories about the holiday.   Collect all six Penguin Christmas Classics:   A Christmas Carol  by Charles Dickens Christmas at Thompson Hall: And Other Christmas Stories  by Anthony Trollope The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum A Merry Christmas: And Other Christmas Stories  by Louisa May Alcott The Night Before Christmas  by Nikolai Gogol The Nutcracker  by E. T. A. Hoffmann For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. “For lit nerds and loved ones who are notoriously hard to shop for, you can’t go wrong with these festively bound classics. . . . Their size makes them perfectly stocking-stuffable.” — Entertainment Weekly, “The Must List”   “Leave it to the folks at Penguin—who gave us Gothed-out editions of horror classics for Halloween—to package these . . . slim Yuletide-themed volumes.” — Newsday, “Best Books to Give as Holiday Gifts”   “Remember how Christmas was celebrated before Black Friday with these 19th-century authors, in small uniform volumes wrapped in pretty jackets.” — USA Today, “Holiday Gift Books So Pretty, No Need to Wrap”   “Beautifully designed.” — The Washington Post L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) is the author of  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , the 1900 novel that inspired the classic 1939 film starring Judy Garland. Born in Chittenango, New York, he moved to Hollywood in 1910 and lived there until his death. Mary Cowles Clark (illustrator; 1871–1950) was born in Syracuse, New York. She studied with the Art Students League and later spent her summers painting on Nantucket. CHAPTER FIRST Burzee Have you heard of the great Forest of Burzee? Nurse used to sing of it when I was a child. She sang of the big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it; of their rough coating of bark and queer, gnarled limbs; of the bushy foliage that roofed the entire forest, save where the sunbeams found a path through which to touch the ground in little spots and to cast weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of dried leaves. The Forest of Burzee is mighty and grand and awesome to those who