A Child's Christmas in Scarborough

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Although Christmas parodies are not uncommon, few writers have had the
courage to take on Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in
Wales.” Successful parody requires a presupposed knowledge of the
original, and therefore Howard Engels took a substantial risk in
parodying a “classic” few Canadians can recite even one line from.
He has protected himself by mostly abandoning Thomas and concentrating
instead on his own Canadian Christmas ghosts from the 1960s. With humor
and an unflinching eye, Engels dredges up a “good old Christmas” of
family tensions, shiny new toys, a cuff on the ear, a kiss under the
mistletoe, a thump on the wall, and even a visit from the police.

Do not be deceived by the picture-book format and the terrific
paintings by veteran children’s illustrator Bill Slavin. This isn’t
a kids’ book: rather, it’s a trip down memory lane for aging
baby-boomers whose Christmas foundations were laid in working-class
suburbia.