My all-time favorite version of this story is from Sesame Street in which Bert and Ernie trade favorite items of theirs to Mr. Hooper in order to get a gift for their BFFs. I am happy to say that this edition didn't really do anything to remove that PBS friendly tale from the top spot.
The artwork was simple. It wasn't bad. But it did very little to invoke the holidays to me. Joel Priddy draws the story in it's original Victorian Era style setting. But this is the first time I've ever seen the household of the two lovers without 1 single Christmas decoration. Not one bough of holly. Not 1 single tree or sprig of mistletoe. In fact, if not for an opening scene of the wise men in some sort of decoration, you might not really know that this story was set during Christmas.
The translation or adaptation, which I think is more appropriate, also seems a little foreign to me. I've read O. Henry's account. This just didn't seem familiar. This version seems to deal too much with finances and not the quest to find an ideal present for a soul mate. Plus, the husband is hardly in this story. It seems only from the wife's perspective and what has always appealed to me about this story was the parity.
Other accounts of The Gift of the Magi seems to have a near 50/50 ratio of story spent on the wife and the husband. Here, it's like 90% wife and maybe 10% husband. And his appearance is only in Act 3. The balance of storytelling is off from what I expect it to be and that odd pacing was what threw things off for me big time!
I did enjoy reading this book. But the near 365 days of expectation of waiting to read this book was outweighed by how little this version played out to those expectations in reality.
A good book. Just not the best version of a personal holiday favorite.
Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.
