“I’ve always wanted to make a children’s book because I have an eight- and a four-year-old that are just crazy about Christmas,” said Woodstock resident Andrew Ralph, as he told the Standard the story of how he wrote his first book. The Christmas-themed coloring book “The Strangest Christmas Story Ever Told” has just been published by Ralph’s own Prosper Publishing — a publishing branch of his new, larger venture, Prosper General Store — and is now on sale at F.H. Gillingham & Sons in Woodstock.
The book is not only a Christmas story, but a time-travel story. “Elf on the Shelf was always a big inspiration,” said Ralph, describing the ritual of hiding the elf from his children each night, and the “wonder” they feel each morning finding it. “What I wanted to do was create a story that gives a voice to all of Santa’s little helpers. And so this first story that I just put out [“The Strangest Christmas Story Ever Told”] is about an elf that builds a time machine and sends Santa on a historic journey through space and time.”
Like a Christmas-themed “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” or an episode of “Dr. Who,” Santa travels through various historical epochs and civilizations — and even pre-civilization. “He goes to the time of dinosaurs. He encounters pirates at night. There’s a part where he’s handing out presents to the women fighting for rights, like the suffragette movement. He ends up in space. There’s so much going on, which is why it’s the strangest Christmas ever told,” said Ralph.
At left, the cover art for “The Strangest Christmas Story Ever Told.” At right, Andrew Ralph. Photos provided.
The choice to write and design the story in the genre of the coloring book was very intentional on the part of Ralph — and also meant for parents, in a way. “Coloring books are one of those things that you can just take anywhere, and it just gives [kids] hours and hours of screen-free meditation, focus work. The best reaction I’ve got are those parents that said, ‘Oh, my God, I gave them the book, and they’ve just been at it, coloring for like three hours straight.’”
The choice of a coloring book format is also related to an even more ambitious goal: film and animation. “The ultimate goal is to create an animated movie around this, like a Christmas Special. You’ve got the whole story and it can be expanded upon.” He added, “I think for right now I just wanted to put out something that kids can enjoy, that gives parents a little break. And Christmas and coming from Woodstock go hand in hand, right?”
Woodstock is the home of “The Strangest Christmas Story Ever Told” in another sense. Ralph met fellow student Brian Clark in the third grade at Woodstock Elementary in 1993, which began a friendship that has lasted to this day. Clark is co-owner of Prosper General Store, which is a branding enterprise that so far makes clothing, hats, mugs — and one coloring book. “Andrew and I have been longtime collaborators, and always talked about starting our own brand,” said Clark.
For more on this, please see our Dec. 11 edition of the Vermont Standard.
