10 December 2007

A Library Christmas

I belong to a Yahoo Group called "Christmas to the Max" where everyone decorates multiple trees (the owner of the group has 56!). I'm not in their league, but I love reading about their decorations and they're just Nice Folks. However, being there has inspired me to do a couple of small "theme trees." I have all my Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ornaments on a small tree set in a boot planter on the table in the hallway, and put the feather tree with the old 1950s ornaments and the gilded walnuts in the dining room this year.

But I wanted something "library-ish" for the library this year and came up with the idea of a literary tree. This is only three feet high and on a table near the window. Some of the ornaments were easy: I got this year's Harry Potter, Gone With the Wind, Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Winnie the Pooh ornaments (even though they are Disney's version and not Shepard's) from Hallmark. I looked on e-Bay to perhaps get one of the American Girl ornaments, but Molly or Kit (especially Kit as she is the one who likes to write) were both too expensive. I also missed going by American Greetings and getting the Carlton "Ralphie" ornament, since the sequences in A Christmas Story are taken from Jean Shepherd's short stories (but I can still go by there if I like). Our main tree ornaments include a Raggedy Ann and Andy (the Johnny Gruelle books), a Pokey Little Puppy, and a bookworm, so I can pull them out to use, and I also bought Hallmark's bookstore ornament and used one of the Rudolph ornaments since he was originally a book character, but I still needed lots more.

I settled for using the small plastic figures they sell at both Michael's and at Hobbytown for dioramas and playsets. Most of these turned out to be animals, as there were very few figures of humans that I could link to a character. (I noticed at Hobbytown last night that they only had a woman veterinarian; if it had been a man I could have let him represent James Herriot...oh well.) Some of the figures actually can stand in for multiple characters. How many of these characters can you guess? (Remember, these have to be from books, not the movies or television, although the book could later have been made into a movie or television program.)

A fawn.
A small pink pig.
A sorrel horse with a light mane and tail.
A black horse with a white mark on its forehead.
A Jack Russell Terrier.
A West Highland White Terrier.
A collie.
A man in medieval costume with a sword by his side.
A peg-legged pirate.
An adult Dalmatian.
A little girl in a homespun dress and braids holding a doll.
A fox.
A rabbit.
This is the hard one (let's call it extra credit):
A girl in jodhpurs and a white shirt holding a currycomb.

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