Cheerfully did he tumble and cheerfully did he serve

For the next few weeks, I will be reviewing some classic Advent and Christmas titles.  And the first one I wish to share with you is The Little Juggler, retold and illustrated by Barbara Cooney.  This story, based on a medieval French legend, exists in many forms.  It has been turned into an opera, and was once a fixture of Christmastime radio plays.  It was in this latter version that Barbara Cooney first encountered it, where it inspired something akin to a conversion experience.  She became passionately committed to creating her own version of the story, and traveled to France to research the settings and find the earliest extant manuscripts of the tale.  She even named her as-yet-unborn son Barnaby, after the titular character.

In brief, The Little Juggler tells the story of a poor orphan in the 13th century who ekes out a living doing juggling and tumbling tricks in exchange for a few coins.  Life, though never easy, becomes impossibly difficult when winter sets in, but Barnaby is taken in by some kindly monks and survives off their charity.  When Christmas approaches, Barnaby is determined to give a gift to Our Lady, and since he only knows how to do one thing, his present will be a juggling routine.  How the monks (and Our Lady) react to this gift form the beautiful conclusion to this fable of sacrifice and spiritual childhood. 

Though there are other picture books of this story (including the easier-to-find Clown of God by Tomie de Paola), I believe the illustrations in Cooney's version are unparalleled. 

The three-color illustrations, while doubtless done for financial reasons, perfectly evoke a medieval manuscript.  And I am amazed at how Cooney's illustration style, which I associate with 19th-century New England settings in The Ox-Cart Man and Miss Rumphius, works so well here.  We have a family tradition of reading a Christmas book each day of Advent, and I always save this one for last.  Its message, that even the smallest child can have something to offer the infant Christ, is something we all need to hear, in this and every age, and I have no doubt that this story, having lasted for seven hundred years, will last many centuries more. 

Rating: A+