Thursday, October 3, 2024

Dunbar. This Is the Star

This Is the Star is a children's book by Joyce Dunbar, with art by Gary Blythe, published in 1996. It is available at the Internet Archive.

Here is a YouTube read-along:

This is another faith-based "Jack" built, starting with the Nativity star and ending with the Christ child. It is told cumulatively with rhyming couplets in long lines throughout:

This is the Christ child born to be king
While hosts of heavenly angels sing.
These are the wise men come from afar
Who also saw and followed the star,
Bearing the gold and fragrant myrrh
And frankincense, the gifts that were
Placed by the manger warm with hay
Wherein a newborn baby lay.
This is the ox and this the ass
Who saw these wonders come to pass
At the darkened inn where the only room
Was a stable out in the lamplit gloom
For the donkey and his precious load
Who trudged the long and weary road,
Looked on by the angel shining bright
Who came to the shepherds watching by night
That saw the star in the sky.

The art in the book emphasizes the illumination provided by the star:


This is a nice example of a rhyming-couplet "Jack" story, with a very nice book design. The story accumulates line by line, but when the child is born, that line gets its own page:



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