Mrs. Claus Reveals the Secrets of Season Greetings

Achieving a lifelong dream, Pat Davis (Greenberg) of Wilmington, MA had always wanted to write a children’s book about Christmas and the special traditions in her own family. A chance meeting with a new children’s book publisher, Little Blue Flower Press of Ward Hill, MA and finding the right illustrator, Donna Berger of Lowell, MA helped make her dream a reality—and the result, The Secret of Season’s Greetings, is a universal tale every family can enjoy.

“Pat was the perfect person to write this book,” said publisher, Pam Marin-Kinsley. “Pat Davis has been playing Mrs. Claus for over 20 years. The last 5 years she has portrayed Mrs. Claus on a special train ride, “The Polar Express” sponsored by St. Michael’s School in North Andover, MA. The train runs between Newburyport, MA and Beverly, MA in a daylong event that attracts over 2,400 children and their parents. Donna Berger had illustrated 9 other children’s books before this one and had just the right warm almost Norman Rockwell-like style to make The Secret of Season’s Greetings something very special.”

The Secret of Season’s Greetings tells the story of a family down on their luck and how the special, small traditions handed down in the mother’s family are revealed to be something far greater and more magical than any of them ever imagined.

“We wanted to put the importance of family back into Christmas. Everything is too much about presents and gadgets. What we really remember year after year are the small things—the personal rituals that every family has,” said the author, Pat Davis.

Patricia (Pat) Davis was born in Boston, and grew up in Revere, Massachusetts. One of seven girls, her childhood was a difficult one. She left school at the age of twelve to care for her ailing mother, Lillian. At fifteen, her mother passed away and while they only had this short time together, Lillian left her with a lifetime of wisdom.

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A Sour Twist of Lennon

Everybody from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro loves to remember John Lennon as the dippy Utopian of “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too.”

Less remembered is the Lennon of “Run For Your Life”: “Well I’d rather see you dead little girl/Than to be with another man.” In Philip Norman’s merciless biography, Lennon No. 2 is on full display, and the picture isn’t pretty.

Spiteful and selfish, miserly and misogynistic, Lennon abused his friends, cheated on his women and quarreled with almost everyone he knew. His politics were phony and his public persona a pose, the working-class hero who never labored a day in his life. (Personal motto: “Death before work.”) Even such details as his all-macrobiotic diet were hippie spinmastering; Norman recounts a horrified host discovering Lennon and Yoko Ono ransacking his refrigerator for bologna. (Providence Journal - Full Story)

Nights in Rodanthe

from Amazon.com
Nicolas Sparks logs more miles on the winding high road of romance with the story of two middle-aged people who meet by chance in the small North Carolina coastal town of Rodanthe.

A housewife who has focused on everyone but herself indulges in a brief, intense, secret affair with a stranger who changes her life forever. As the story begins, Adrienne Willis is 60, the divorced mother of three grown children. To help her troubled daughter cope with the untimely recent death of her husband, Adrienne tells her the tale of her love affair, which took place 15 years prior. At the time, Adrienne was an uptight matron whose ex-husband had just left her for a younger woman. This rejection colors her entire life, and Sparks realistically portrays a vulnerable and isolated woman who throws herself into raising her children to escape her despair.

Paul Flanner, her paramour, is a surgeon and an obsessive workaholic with no genuine connection to his wife or son, whose world completely falls apart when one of his patients inexplicably dies. Sparks builds a taut, plausible relationship between his protagonists, but even fans may be irked by the obviousness of their story and the inevitability of their fate.

The book was very good. However, it reminded me a lot of his first book "Message in a Bottle". Worth the read, and if they stick to the book, the movie should be just as good.