The Friendly Beasts — 21st Century Housewife

Here's a sweet little illustrated version of the lovely old carol, "The Friendly Beasts." I should have offered it to you as our fourth Advent calendar book, but here it is now as I play a little catch up.

The simple and old-fashioned illustrations from good Tomie dePaola are just right for this ancient song. The sub-title of the book does say "English," even though I'm pretty sure it was originally a French tune, but I'm not going to squawk too much, since a version of the song appeared in England as early as the 12th century. I mean, if you want to get really picky, and I always do, it was originally sung in Latin -- but that's not Tomie dePaola's fault. The nice thing about this edition of the song-turned-story is that the music is included in the back of the book. A winner!