Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: Carols for Christmas
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is not really a picture book although the beauty of the illustrations are the reason I am including it here. Instead, it is a book of Christmas carols, most of them familiar traditional English, French, German, and Welsh tunes. The music was arranged by Barrie Carson Turner. The eighteen Christmas carols in the book include: “Silent Night,” “Angels, from the Realms of Glory,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and O Come, All Ye Faithful.”Each carol is illustrated with a full page painting from the collections of The National Gallery in London. These magnificent paintings include details from Christ Glorified in Heaven by Fra Angelico, The Adoration of the Kings by Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Adoration of the Magi by Carlo Dolci, ‘Mystic Nativity’ by Sandro Botticelli, and A Winter Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich. At the end of the book, there are several pages of information about the paintings.
This is such a beautiful book that I regret that this new edition is in paperback rather than being hardbound. However, on the plus side, it is a good size (10.8” x 8.7”), the pages are of good quality paper, the artwork is beautiful, and the book is very reasonably priced. (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, originally published in Great Britain in 1993, this edition, 2004. ISBN: 1845073053) Compare prices.
