Book 63 of 2013: A Christmas Posy by Mrs Molesworth

As I've mentioned numerous times, in the run up to Christmas (Read: November) I downloaded a whole bunch of Christmas-themed books onto my Kindle to help me get into the spirit of the season (not that I needed much help getting into the spirit of things, but, you know). Lots of the free books available for download on Amazon are really old ones which have been made available digitally and A Christmas Posy was one of those, originally published in 1888.

This was a little collection of short stories which I could imagine being given as a gift at Christmas during the Victorian period. It was obviously aimed at children and most of the stories had some sort of moral message. In that respect it reminded me of Little Women (which I'd finished reading not long before reading this).

Of the stories in this collection one of my favourites was about some/missing bon bons; an older sister comes home to her brood of younger siblings while their mother is sick, she brings gifts and one of them goes missing with the blame placed solely on one of her sisters, who is duly punished. Except it's all a big misunderstanding and they haven't been eaten at all. There's also a story about a little boy with a violin which I enjoyed and one about a dog named Rollo/Bruno (depending on who he is living with) that I thought deserved a mention.

Considering the name of the collection is A Christmas Posy, most of the stories stray away from the Christmas season, which is what makes me think it was intended to be given as a gift at that time of year. All the same, it was a really quick little read (I was through it in two days) and on the whole it was an enjoyable book.