A long, long time ago in Ireland, a little girl named Angela stole the Baby Jesus from a Nativity scene, so worried was she that the babe was too cold to spend the night in the unheated church sanctuary.
Her son, Frank McCourt, grew up to write about his own childhood – in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angela’s Ashes.” And two years ago, when his editor asked him if he had any ideas for a children’s book, he remembered her Christmas story.
“Angela and the Baby Jesus” is the new book that old story became, and on Monday, McCourt came to San Juan Capistrano to share that story with the elementary-school kids of St. Margaret’s Episcopal School.
Standing at the front of the chapel to address the pupils uniformly clad in their red school cardigans, McCourt recounted the story he’d first heard as a child their age while illustrations by Raul Colon flashed on the wall above him.
“She went to the church … and she thought, ‘I can’t leave him here, he’ll turn blue,’ ” McCourt said, his Irish accent still there after years living in New York City. “What did she do?”
“She stole him!” one kid shouted as others raised their hands to speak.
“She liberated him,” McCourt said. “She took him home.”
For 20 minutes, McCourt talked to the students, sharing the story and answering questions such as “Was the Baby Jesus a real baby?” and “Are all the books you write true stories?”
“How long did it take?” one student asked of the writing of the book.
“I had it in my head, and a few years ago, I wrote it in a notebook,” McCourt answered. “So it took me about half a day. And then you have to get someone to draw the pictures, and it took him weeks and weeks to do that.”
McCourt came to St. Margaret’s after his publisher contacted Alex Uhl, owner of Whale of a Tale bookstore in Irvine, and she thought of the school and contacted its librarian, Victoria Burnett.
In a brief interview after his talk, he said he’s spoken to a number of school groups on his book tour, joking that the kids are the toughest audience to address.
“Once you can get them (to pay attention) you spend the rest of the day congratulating yourself,” McCourt said.
The Christmas story about his mother was one he’d heard over and over while growing up, he said. First for he and his brother Malachy, and then as other siblings and friends came along, she’d tell it again and again.
“This is what we did,” he said of their childhood in Ireland. “There was no television, you had to be a storyteller. And with kids, you can tell a story 100 times and you can never change the details. She’d go off on a flight of fancy – ‘…and then I got arrested!’ – and we’d say, ‘No! That’s not how it goes!’ ”
As for a message to the story, McCourt said he’s not a preacher and didn’t write the tale with any tidy moral to wrap things up at the end.
“I think it shows her with a strong maternal instinct early in life,” he said. “And compassion.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com
