Product Description

A boy called Joachim acquires a strange old Advent calender - and uncovers from it the story of a girl called Elisabet, who disappeared from her home fifty years earlier. Elisabet has been taken back through time and right across Europe to Palestine, to see the Holy Family in Bethlehem. Two thousand years of history flash by, and angels, shepherds and wise men join her on her joyful pilgrimage. It is Joachim who, through the Advent calendar, makes it possible for her to come home. THE CHRISTMAS MYSTERY transcends all barriers. It has already proved a great success with colour decorations for children, and as a paperback for adults. It has now been abridged for younger readers and freshly illustrated by a talented new young artist. The qualities of wonder and enquiry that readers loved in SOPHIE'S WORLD are as strong as ever in this beautiful and mysterious story which appeals to believers and non-believers alike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273110 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-16
• Format: Abridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
When Joachim opens the first window on his advent calendar, his excitement mounts as the countdown to Christmas Day begins. But soon he notices that strange things are happening behind the little windows, and everyday something mysterious and new appears. Meanwhile Elisabeth and the angel Ephiriel are on their own very special journey, and it is only when the last window on Joachim's calendar is opened that the true magic and wonder of Christmas is revealed.

Josten Gaarder, author of the international bestseller Sophie's World, has taken the story of Christmas and given it an alluring, mystical, modern twist that transports readers back to the Bethlehem of baby Jesus without ever losing sight of the wonder of it all. With illustrations by Rosemary Wells, The Christmas Mystery is lifted into the realms of the classics by the richness and poetry of Gaarder's language, making it so much more than just another book for Christmas. --Susan Harrison

Yoga & Health, December 1, 2003
...an atmospheric Christmas tale for the whole family.

Bournemouth Daily Echo, 15 November 2003
"Entertaining, informative and magical."

Customer Reviews

A wonderful pre-Christmas read!
A friend lent me this book a year ago. It captures the meaning, feel and child-centred innocence of Christmas like nothing else I have read. This year I have my own copy, and have ordered a second copy to read to the Year 5 class that I teach. The chapters are titled as days in December, so it makes a perfect advent read. My wife and I also intend to read it to our children as a preparation for Christmas. The only 'problem' with the book is that it's so tempting to read more than one day's worth at a time. A wonderful, magical book which actually gives you that Christmassy feel that so many of us lose when we get older!

For the child in everyone.
Read this book in December, when you're fed up with the commercialism of it all and re-capture the magic you felt as a child. It's magical, enchanting and it certainly appealed to the child in me. The clever layering of stories - Joachim in the present and Elisabeth as she makes her journey through time - keeps the brain engaged. But this book is about more than that - despite being built around the Christian Christmas story, it's really about light, hope and joy and a reminder that not everything is about jingling cash tills. A book to treasure.

The best Advent story since Dickens
If you want to put some Magic into a child's Christmas, get this book and read it, one day at a time: It is the best Advent story since Dickens.

This year I did just that - for myself, and the feelings, of warmth and excitement generated made the darker days of winter a little lighter. Like the little boy in the story, I wanted to know the ending, and like the boy, I didn't want it to end.

Each 'chapter' is given a date, starting on the first day of December. There are 24 chapters, and, as it opens - like a flower, or like detective story - new ideas, new questions and new meanings are given to what has almost become a cliché, the Christmas Story and the power generated by it.

You cross Europe, you cross history. You are involved in serious questions - that of refugees, and of lost children, and of power - issues presented in a way a child can start to make sense of if presented in this simple, but not naïve, way.

I am not, by the way, a Christian: Nor am I a child. But I really enjoyed this book.