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The Birds' Christmas Carol: A novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin about a Christmas-born girl who is unusually loving and generous, having a positive effect on everyone with whom she comes into contact.

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Grade 4-7

Kate Douglas Wiggin

The Birds' Christmas Carol: A novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin about a Christmas-born girl who is unusually loving and generous, having a positive effect on everyone with whom she comes into contact.

Paperback (Independently published Dec. 22, 2019)
Carol Bird was born on Christmas day. Her joy is a blessing to her family and all those around her. Weak in body but generous in spirit she has decided that she wants what is possibly to be her last Christmas to truly be about giving to others. A sweet and sad story that will have you laughing and crying by the end. This story truly demonstrates the true Christmas spirit.The Birds' Christmas Carol is a novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin printed privately in 1886 and published in 1888[1] with illustrations by Katharine R. Wireman. Wiggin published the book to help fund the Silver Street Free Kindergarten, which she founded in 1878.The story is about Carol Bird, a Christmas-born child, a young girl who is unusually loving and generous, having a positive effect on everyone with whom she comes into contact. She is the youngest member of her family and has several devoted older brothers. At about the age of 5, Carol contracts an unspecified illness (possibly tuberculosis), and, by the time she is 10, she is bedridden; physicians say that she does not have long to live. Most of the brief novel's plot involves Carol making plans for a Christmas celebration for the nine Ruggles children, a poor, working-class family living near the Birds.Wiggin's story is primarily a moral tale about a loving and generous child. However, unlike the children often featured in similar stories of the period, Carol is refreshingly intelligent and cheerful instead of pious. The story is also enlivened by many humorous touches, particularly in the scenes of the Ruggles family's home life.In 1917, the story was adapted as the silent movie "A Bit o' Heaven" starring Mary Louise as Carol, Donald Watson and Ella Gilbert as Mr. and Mrs. Bird and Mary Talbot as Mrs. Ruggles.Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, 1856 - August 24, 1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor. Wiggin went to California to study kindergarten methods. She began to teach in San Francisco with her sister Nora assistingher, and the two were instrumental in the establishment of over 60 kindergartens for the poor in San Francisco and Oakland. She moved from California to New York, and having no kindergarten work on hand, devoted herself to literature. She sent The Story of Patsy and The Bird's Christmas Carol to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. who accepted them at once. Besides the talent for story-telling, she was a musician, sang well, and composed settings for her poems. She was also an excellent elocutionist. Her first literary work was Half a Dozen Housekeepers, a serial story which she sent to St. Nicholas. After the death of her husband in 1889, she returned to California to resume her kindergarten work, serving as the head of a Kindergarten Normal School. Some of her other works included Cathedral Courtship, A Summer in a Canon, Timothy's Quest, The Story Hour, Kindergarten Chimes, Polly Oliver's Problem, and Children's Rights.
ISBN
1679436937 / 9781679436932
Pages
45
Weight
4.2 oz.
Dimensions
6.0 x 0.1 in.

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