We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog Post to Bring You...

Hello people of the Inter-webs; Sunny Girl here! Tonight, while I go and see The Hobbit and do math homework because that's the kind of hell-raising youth I am, the parental units will be out getting into the Yuletide Spirit with copious amounts of Yuletide spirits. So, my mom has been kind enough to let me step in and write her blog for her tonight.

I'm breaking the rules and choosing a repeat book because tonight it's my night and I want to I really feel like this story really embodies the Christmas spirit. A New Coat for Anna is about a young girl named Anna who needs a new coat for the winter, because she has outgrown her old one.

This proves to be more of a challenge than one would expect. See, Anna and her mother live in post-WWII Europe, and (like all of their neighbors) have no money to spare. So, over the course of a year, you follow the process of her mother bartering away all their valuable possessions and this village coming together to do this thing for a young girl.

What I love most about this book is that there are two different perspectives to read it from, and both end in the same heartwarming conclusion. As a young child it's just a really cool story about this girl and her mom doing a bunch of really cool things to get a coat. When you read it as a more mature person, it's kind of heartbreaking. Her mother is forced to barter off all their lovely heirlooms for this one basic thing she should, in any other circumstance, be able to get without a moment's hesitation. And the townspeople are forced to take her things, because it's very clear none of these people have any money after the war. Either way you read it, you end up with the same story -- a village coming together and overcoming hardship to make a little girl's life a little bit easier. And that's what I really love about this story. And that's what I really want all of you to take away this Advent season!