Christmas without Johnny by Gladys Hasty Carroll covers seven days in the life of a nine year old boy who is so unhappy at school due to being bullied that he gets sick to his stomach each school morning.
This book may have been written in 1950 but could just as easily be true of today's children who are bullied at school. Although the author never deals with the bullies directly, she does, even more importantly, deal with the parents and school teacher and Sunday school teachers, with all the adults in Johnny's world. The adults around him from whom a kind word would help so much, an observant eye, a listening ear.
The author from Maine not only tells an important story, I love her descriptions of the time and town:
It was certainly going to be a white Christmas. It had snowed heavily in the night, but the big snowplow had been out before daybreak, clearing the streets, and before nine o'clock the sidewalk plow had gone through the village. The pattern was that of a broad band of Hamburg insertion, and two narrow bands, all separated by ruffles of lace, running around the hem of the smooth white cambric petticoat which was the lawns before the house and the outlying fields which narrowed with distance as if fitted to a woman's waist.
Now that's just plain pretty and shows you that this is not a depressing book, even if your heart breaks for Johnny. This young boy is lost for a day but falls into kind hands--to a few people who listen to him, see him. And there is one man, in particular, who takes time to believe him and stand up for him, giving Johnny a very good day, the first he has had in a while.
But Mr. Dwight cautions him:
Don't think, though, Johnny, that life is always as you saw it there today. Grown-ups are not always treated as they would like to be. Life is not often easy. But when life is hard for a child it is harder than it could be for anyone who has lived through the process of growing up. What I can't see is why so few adults realize that. They think children are happy enough just because they are children. So when life is hard for adults and they can't fight back successfully at people of their own size they often strike out at children. That's why some children are the most miserable creatures in the world. That's why some of them run away. That's why some of them never come back.
Mr. Dwight takes Johnny back to his parents and teacher, people who are worried sick over his disappearance. His parents love him, his teacher takes her job seriously, but perhaps none of them had understood Johnny's fears and worries and problems until Mr. Dwight has some words with them before telling them that a tired Johnny is asleep in his car.
I do think that today's teachers probably see a child like Johnny with so much more care, and today's parents probably are more observant of their children's worries than adults in the 1950s. I don't think kids told their parents about their worries back then, speaking from firsthand experience. It was a different time.
But there are still Johnny's today who slip through the cracks, far too many of them.
I never realized how rare copies of these vintage Christmas books I have are. But I did find this one here.
No, not the $768 one! There are used ones starting at under $5. I saw that the copy I linked to in my last Favorite Christmas Books post sold, as did the one in the first post. And naturally, I just know it was bought by one of you so maybe I have a small part of boosting the economy. [And I don't have an Amazon store so if you do buy something I link to anywhere it's just in hopes I can spread the love of these old Christmas books.]
It's turned cold again here in Nashville, very good reading weather. And RH and his brother are finishing the electrical work to hang my beautiful green light fixture on the carport and workshop that they've spent over a year building in our backyard in their spare time. The painters were here last week and the building is now a beautiful Swedish red, the wide window trim is white, and the doors green. It's turned out just as I hoped it would when I published the post about it early in the year with inspiration pictures from Pinterest.
I hope to show it to you soon but I'm beginning to have doubts that Christmas lights will make it up on the building this year. That's okay with me, I'll just be thankful to be here myself this Christmas and each family member, long distance or not.
Take care, friends. I mean that.
