“On the twenty-third – everybody knows it – the train will slowly wind up and around the mountains, and on the platform of its caboose will stand the rich man in a blue wool coat. He will toss a sparkling silver package into the hands of each child who waits beside the tracks, and for some, it will be the only present they receive.”
Silver Packages, An Appalachian Christmas Story by Cynthia Rylant
The story Silver Packages, is based on the Christmas train that chugs through Appalachia each year. Cynthia Rylant describes the expectation, the hope and the gratitude of a boy name Frankie. Originally published in her book, Children of Christmas, Stories for the Season, the theme goes deeper than the usual “glad tidings and good cheer.” Frankie, like the other characters in the Children of Christmas stories, finds something to be thankful for but it is not derived from having his “wish list” granted.
In Children of Christmas, Stories for the Season, Rylant portrays her characters honestly and compassionately. Garnett Ash, the Christmas Tree Man, “spends his birthdays alone, eats Thanksgiving dinner alone, watches the beginnings of each winter and spring and summer and fall alone, [but] come December he will be surrounded.” In another story, Phillip, an 11 year old, hasn't seen his grandfather for 5 years and is not sure he wants his grandfather to come and spend Christmas with him. He doesn't know why he feels that way, but in the end he finds a special way to make his grandfather happy. In “Ballerinas and Bears,” young Sylvia, spends Christmas Eve walking the streets of New York, imagining her Christmas. Her gift that night is the kindness of a stranger. The last story in the collection is “All the Stars in the Sky.” It is about a homeless woman named Mae. She has wild eyes and nobody trusts her. She wears stinking clothes and nobody approaches her. Nobody likes her but her dogs. But on Christmas Eve, Mae receives a healing gift.
Cynthia Rylant's Christmas stories remind and encourage us to reach out to the lonely, the poor and the homeless who live in our communities year round.
Cynthia Rylant is considered by the Educational Paperback Association to be one of America's top 100 children's authors. She has published over one hundred books, including the Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby, and Poppleton series. As one critic puts it, she writes award-winning everything: poetry, short stories, nonfiction and novels for young adults. She has also illustrated several children's books.
She grew up in West Virginia and many of her books are directly connected to her childhood in Appalachia. She says she didn't read much because there weren't any public libraries or bookstores nor was there money to buy books. Her training as a writer began with the Archie and Jughead comics available at the drugstore. The only stories she tried to write as a child were called “My Adventures with the Beatles.” Her career as a writer began after working in a library and reading children's books.
She says she has never forgotten her grandfather's advice. “Always do the best you can with what you've got.” Cynthia Rylant, like Frankie in Silver Packages, might have wished for things in her childhood that she never received, but like Frankie, she is taking everything she did receive and using her talents as an a author and as an illustrator to give her best to others.
