By Justin Bigos, Staff Writer
As our towns string up their holiday lights and hang evergreen wreaths, it’s that time of year when families may want to cozy up to a fire and read some wintry tales old and new. This year, we have a new offering: Reading resident Michael Caduto’s “Enchanted Night Before Christmas,” a children’s book based on a turn-of-the-19th-century family of modest means from Sharon, Vt., and their Christmas tradition of making gingerbread cookies in the shapes of their friends and neighbors. Without giving the story away, it’s safe to say that one night something magical happens, and afterwards the family’s lives will never be the same.
The story’s inspiration began at Beaver Meadow Union Chapel in West Norwich. “Not a town name you hear very often, but that’s a historic part right on the town border with Sharon,” Caduto told the Standard this week. Years ago, he had led a Christmas service at the church, and then asked people to come up front and share “what to them personified the spirit of Christmas.” After putting lit candles in a birch log that Caduto had bored holes into, the volunteers began to speak — and there was one story Caduto could not later forget.
“One person shared how when they were growing up, they had lost a parent, and they really did not have much money or means, and so they didn’t have anything to buy gifts for people,” said Caduto. “So they made cookies and shaped them into the likeness of people they knew, and decorated them to look like them — friends and family — and that’s what their Christmas gifts were. I went for a walk that day, and the story that became ‘Enchanted Night Before Christmas’ by the end of the day had come to me.” Caduto said he had typed up the first full draft by nightfall.
The story evolved from there. Caduto wrote a musical version, which a couple of Vermont theater companies are currently considering for stage productions this winter, and shared versions of his manuscript with local writing groups, including the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). He eventually found a press — Pelican Publishing Company, an imprint of Arcadia Publishing — and the book was published on Oct. 14 of this year.
Caduto is a world-renowned author and storyteller, having published over 20 books that have won numerous honors, including the children’s literature Aesop Prize and Skipping Stones Award. He has traveled the globe and been invited to various events and venues to tell multicultural stories, some of which are indigenous to this land. While Caduto is not himself Native American, he began a relationship with the Abenaki people upon moving to Vermont from Ann Arbor, Mich., where he had attended graduate school (Caduto was raised in Rhode Island).
“My connection to Native people came about through my work. My main work and my academic work was in teaching children about the environment, and incorporating environmental stewardship into it,” he said. “When I moved to Vermont, I began working with the Native people here — the Abenaki — and sharing some of their traditional stories. And that kind of evolved into another way of teaching through traditional knowledge and wisdom. Now I do stories from all over the world to share with children.” Caduto’s engagements take him to schools, libraries, places of worship, and nature centers around the world.
As someone who has such a breadth of experience and narrative scope, Caduto still believes in the power of the local story. “Even Charles Dickens’s ‘[A] Christmas Carol’ is very local to that part of England in that period of time, but has universal themes. And this book [‘Enchanted Night Before Christmas’] is very much like that. It has its roots in this region, and yet what it conveys in terms of how we share and give — our generosity — often comes back to us in different ways and completes a circle. That theme is universal, and I think it resonates with people, no matter where they are.”
At left, Michael Caduto. At right, Seth and Amy Sherman make cookies in the likeness of their neighbors, the farmer and the baker, on page eight of “Enchanted Night Before Christmas.” Igor Kovyar Illustration
Dickens’s Christmas tale — a novella first published in 1843, and which has been retold in at least 230 film and television adaptations (according to the IMDB online database) — definitely made an impact on Caduto in his youth. “When I was a kid and watching whatever versions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ were playing at that time — every Christmas I would watch it — I would always come out of it thinking, ‘I can do that. I can be a better person,’” he explained. “That whole idea that Ebenezer Scrooge is so incredibly flawed, and yet there’s hope that we can become our better selves through learning from our mistakes and realizing just how important other people are in our lives. That, I think, is the reason that story resonates down through the ages, because that’s the universal theme. Many of us strive to be the best person we can, and we learn and we make mistakes, and we pick ourselves up and try to do better the next time.”
Another quality of the story readers of “Enchanted Night Before Christmas” may appreciate are its lush, deeply textured illustrations by artist Igor Kovyar, who turned out to be a perfect fit for Caduto. “I really had a very specific style that I was looking for,” said Caduto, and the publisher gave me a lot of leeway in choosing an illustrator. I looked at hundreds of different people and their styles, and I really wanted a very specific classical style. I found that most of the illustrators who work in that style trained in Eastern Europe.” Caduto said that he reached Kovyar through an agency in the Pacific Northwest, and then they worked together directly. “In this particular case, I was able to choose an illustrator who is exactly who I was hoping to get, and the publisher approved his artwork. I just feel fantastic about the art and its fit with the story.”
One last thing readers may look forward to: a cookie recipe. Included in the book is a gingerbread spice cookie recipe by King Arthur Baking Company, in honor of the book’s family giving gingerbread cookies to their neighbors at Christmas.
Those who’d like a taste of those cookies, as well as Caduto’s book, can catch him on Saturday, Dec. 20, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock. After his reading and book signing, the audience will be invited to decorate gingerbread cookies supplied by the pastry team at the Woodstock Inn & Resort. The event is co-sponsored by Yankee Bookshop. More info can be found at normanwilliams.org.