{"id":24974,"date":"2016-11-22T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T19:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=24974"},"modified":"2016-11-21T17:48:03","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T00:48:03","slug":"mr-dogs-christmas-at-hollow-tree-inn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/mr-dogs-christmas-at-hollow-tree-inn\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas at Hollow Tree Inn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mr.<\/a>As a boy one of my secret adventures was to scour the bookshelves at my grandmother\u2019s house for books I could not find anywhere else. <\/p>\n

Grandma<\/a> and I were a match made in heaven \u2013 I was a bookworm and she was a school teacher.<\/p>\n

I read not only from her vast collection of Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> and Saturday Evening Post<\/em> but I also greatly enjoyed her collection of children\u2019s books that dated back to her own childhood. Among her collection was a book that contained stories of \u201cMr. Dog\u201d and other characters set in Hollow Tree. <\/p>\n

So when a passionate publisher recently reached out for our take on a book titled \u201cMr. Dog\u2019s Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u201d something in my memory caused me to jump at the chance. <\/p>\n

Opening that package with the red book inside was very much like Christmas<\/a> morning for me. <\/p>\n

For the record, Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas<\/a> at Hollow Tree Inn was written in 1898 by Albert Bigelow Paine. It is just one story of a collection of many adventures featuring Mr. Dog and the other characters of the Hollow Tree People. <\/p>\n

I cannot recall the original Hollow Tree story that I read when I was a boy. But my memory of Mr. Dog is one of pure enchantment, charm and delight. It took a lot to make a ten year old boy in the 1970s laugh \u2013 but the late Victorian era stories of Albert Bigelow Paine did it for me. <\/p>\n

Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas<\/a> is a simple story. \u201c\u2026the Hollow Tree people had never heard of Santa<\/a> Claus. They knew about Christmas<\/a>, of course, because everybody, even the cows and the sheep, know about that; but they had never heard of Santa<\/a> Claus.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the knowledge of Santa<\/a> Claus comes to the Hollow Tree people they naturally want to have that Santa<\/a> experience. So they determine to make and to hang their own stockings. For Mr. Dog, one of the many fun characters of Hollow Tree, the opportunity was just too rich to pass up. He would play Santa<\/a> Claus \u2013 complete with the long white beard. <\/p>\n

The illustrations of the Old Hollow Tree stories I read at Grandma\u2019s house lent a lot to my boyhood imagination in the theater of the mind as I read the stories. <\/p>\n

This new edition of Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas<\/a> is more vibrant than ever with the illustrations of Adam McCauley<\/strong><\/a>, who recreates the spirit of the old illustrations faithfully. <\/p>\n

This is an old story but the drawings are new. Yet holding it and reading it took me back in time and made it all new again. Mr. Dog is funny, delightful, and wholly entertaining. <\/p>\n

Betsy Cordes, intrepid publisher of this revitalized edition of Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas<\/a> at Hollow Tree Inn, brought forth the volume in honor and memory of many Christmases past when the book was read in her family as a matter of tradition. <\/p>\n

Why wouldn\u2019t Mr. Dog \u2013 who entertained kids at the turn of the 20th Century and 60 years later \u2013 entertain children yet again?<\/p>\n

It is not my habit to gush about a product. But run to Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas.com<\/strong><\/a> and get this book today. If you can\u2019t make it a part of your Christmas<\/a> Eve tradition to read alongside A Visit from St. Nicholas<\/em> then make it part of your routine of reading Dickens in the weeks ahead of Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> is usually a nostalgic journey for us all. We\u2019re all too young now to have pure nostalgia about Mr. Dog\u2019s Christmas<\/a>. But the great thing about books is that while their covers get old their insides never do. Bring this one book into your family library and enjoy it again for every Christmas<\/a> to come. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a boy one of my secret adventures was to scour the bookshelves at my grandmother\u2019s house for books I could not find anywhere else. Grandma and I were a match made in heaven \u2013 I was a bookworm and she was a school teacher. I read not only from her vast collection of Reader\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":91,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[622],"class_list":["post-24974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-stories","tag-mr-dogs-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}