I can tell it’s December when my stats are full of searches for Hanna’s Christmas! If you’re new: it’s been out of print for a long time, so here’s a read-aloud video to share with your kids.
If you’re on the hunt for a used copy, set yourself a reminder to check Amazon Marketplace and eBay in June or July. 🙂 Resellers tend to mark the book up to ludicrous prices at this time of year, when demand is high.
Every year at this time, my blog stats show dozens of searches for the Christmas picture book I wrote long ago. It’s been out of print for ages and tends to be pricey on the resale market, especially this time of year. Last year I decided to read it aloud on video so folks who can’t find it can watch it with their kids.
No, it’s not back in print—as I wrote that subject title I suddenly realized I might be setting some of you up for disappointment. But I hope you’ll find this almost as good a surprise. This time of year, I get a lot of email from readers looking for copies of Hanna’s Christmas, which has been out of print for, I don’t know, a decade at least. Sometimes the letters sound pretty frustrated: as the holidays approach, used copies of the book jump to astronomical rates in the resale market. I don’t have any available for sale myself—I didn’t even hold on to enough copies for my own children. (I didn’t have quite as many kids when I wrote the book.)
But a couple of days ago, I got a lovely email from a teacher who said her class really wanted to hear the story, and would I consider reading it aloud in a video. Would you believe that has never occurred to me? It was a great idea, and that’s what I’ve done. I made a short video intro below and then comes a second video with the reading of the book. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Every December I get lots of queries from kind readers wondering where they might find a copy of my out-of-print picture book, Hanna’s Christmas, for something more reasonable than the fifty-dollars-and-upward it’s going for at Amazon Marketplace these days. (Crazy!) Here’s a post I wrote about it in December, 2006. I still don’t have any leads beyond the pricey ones at Amazon, eBay, etc. So sorry, folks!
Hanna’s Christmas was published in 2001 as a joint effort by HarperFestival (an imprint of HarperCollins) and Hanna Andersson, the clothing retailer. (I used my married name, Peterson, not my pen name, Wiley.) The Hanna folks carried it in their catalog for a season or two, but the print run was small and it was not expected to live much longer than that.
I was commissioned to write the book as a work-for-hire, which means there’s no royalty—the writer gets a flat fee and that’s that, no matter how well the book sells. Most books involving licensed characters or merchandise tie-ins are work-for-hire projects. I don’t do work-for-hire anymore, but it was a good way to hone my craft when I was young and hungry. It was also a good way to pay scary medical bills when we were self-employed.
I’m fond of the Hanna book, although it was a challenge to write. Like every other work-for-hire I’ve done, there were a great many editors involved (senior editor, junior editor, packager, etc). I was hired by HarperCollins to write “a picture book about a little Swedish girl named Hanna who moves to America and is homesick, and it’s Christmas. Oh, and also we’d like there to be a tomten in it.”
They already had sketches of Hanna and the tomten—adorably and whimsically drawn by artist Melissa Iwai. From there it was all up to me. I came up with the storyline, which had to be approved by all the aforementioned folks plus someone at Hanna Andersson itself. Then I wrote a draft, which got bumped back and forth a zillion times as various editors weighed in with contradictory remarks.
Like this. In the first draft, I described the tomten’s hat as “red as a rowanberry.” The junior editor bounced it back with a strikethrough.
“Change to ‘his hat was bright red,'” read the note in the margin. “American readers won’t know rowanberries.”
Sigh. I argued that “bright red” was flat and boring. Okay, I wasn’t that blunt, but that was the gist. I pointed out that we’d be better off cutting the whole sentence, since the artwork would clearly show that the tomten’s hat was red anyway.
Nope, said the editor, go with “his hat was bright red.” So I did, growling at the screen. When you’re reading a book to your kids, you don’t want to get stuck dragging through pedestrian sentences like “his hat was bright red.” Bleh.
And then the next person up the line—the senior editor on the project, whom I’d worked with before, a first-rate editor with an excellent eye—read the manuscript. She sent it back with her comments. There was a note by “his hat was bright red.”
“Flat. Can you punch up?”
Me: “AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!”
She was absolutely right, of course. I changed it to “red as a hollyberry” and that’s the line that made it into the book. I still think rowanberry was better.
But I digress. Anyway, I loved the story and am really very fond of my slightly grumpy Hanna and her even grumpier tomten friend. I was quite pleased that I got to work in the St. Lucia feast day tradition, since that was already such a happy tradition in our little family. I got a kick out of having Hanna and the tomten make a construction paper crown, because that was what I had done for Jane the December before. I loved the artwork—I have never met or even spoken to Melissa Iwai, but I thought her work was gorgeous. (I keep meaning to check out her other books. Looks like she has a lot of them! Her website is cool, too, especially the process section.)
In the end, I was really happy with the book and was a little bummed it was a merch tie-in, because of course that put it in a different category of book and I knew it would never be reviewed by the critics. To my surprise, it did get a nice little review in School Library Journal, but still, it was a commercial property, not intended for a long and dignified life on library shelves. After all, the characters are all wearing Hanna Andersson clothing. Even the endpapers are Hanna prints. (We actually have a baby outfit in the same pattern.)
But in the end, I’m glad I took on the Hanna project. I liked the challenge of trying to tell an engaging and well-crafted story within the confines placed upon me by the various bosses. There’s a certain satisfaction in trying to make art out of something so commercial.
Last year I was amused to discover that the book had taken on a new life in the resale market. People were actually hunting for it, trying to land a copy. This year (2006) it seems there are no copies on the market at all. I guess everyone who bought it last year decided to hold on to it, which is nice to think about.
Over the years, I gave away almost all of my author comps. The book really is going to disappear for good soon, save for a few scattered copies on people’s Christmas shelves. So to the very nice folks who have written me in recent weeks, asking if I know where you can find copies, I’m afraid I have to tell you I’m unable to help you out. But I deeply appreciate your interest!
was published in 2001 as a joint effort by HarperFestival (an imprint of HarperCollins) and