Literature
In 1957, Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was published by Random House. The tale's rhyming verse accompanies illustrations by the author, and follows a disagreeable character called the Grinch and his attempts to thwart the arrival of Christmas by stealing the gifts, trims, and other trappings of the holiday from the happy Whos of Whoville. In spite of his attempts, Christmas arrives all the same. The Grinch realizes then that Christmas is something more than its trappings. The book criticizes the commercialization of Christmas and satirizes those who exploit the holiday. The tale was adapted into a 1966 short animated film for television with a screenplay by Seuss and narration by Boris Karloff. Later adaptations include a Broadway musical and a feature film in 2000 starring Jim Carrey.
At 100 years of age in 1960, Grandma Moses illustrated Clement Clark Moore's Christmas poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas as The Night Before Christmas for Random House. The book was published after her death in 1961.
Read more about this topic: Christmas In The Post-War United States
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)