A classic Christmas folk song from Sweden, in which youthful stable-boy Staffan - AKA St. Stephen, Sweden's patron saint of horses - witnesses the fateful star over Bethlehem, and sets out to tell King Herod of the birth of the Christ, is translated into English in this small picture-book from 1970. Translator Ross Shideler, a professor of Scandinavian languages and literature, presents four lines of the song on every two-page spread. His text is paired with striking artwork from Nicolas Sidjakov, an illustrator who, in 1961, was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his work on Ruth Robbins' Baboushka and the Three Kings...

I was quite excited to discover the existence of this little book, in my annual hunt for new (or new to me) picture-books based on Christmas songs and carols - a long-standing interest of mine - as I had never before encountered one from the Swedish tradition. As it happens, the song contained in Staffan: An Old Christmas Folk Song is quite similar, at least in some narrative incidents, to the English "St. Stephen and Herod," Child ballad 22, which claims that the martyrdom of St. Stephen occurred under Herod, during the first Christmas season, and uses this to explain St. Stephen's Day occurring on the day after Christmas. Interestingly, in the English ballad St. Stephen is stoned to death for daring to leave Herod in search of Christ, whereas here, in this Swedish variant, Staffan seems to escape: "He ordered young Staffan bound foot and hand / But the ropes fell off at the boy's command."

I enjoyed this one, not only because it presented me with a Christmas song and tradition previously unknown to me - the music for the song is included at the rear of the book - but also because the artwork was so bold and engaging. The latter surprised me a bit, as I was fairly indifferent to Sidjakov's work on Baboushka and the Three Kings. I'm not sure what medium the artist was using here, but the result almost looks like vividly colored block prints:



The afterword claims that this was still a popular Christmas song in Sweden, at the time of publication in 1970, and I finished it wondering whether that were still so. Recommended to anyone interested in Swedish Christmas traditions, as well as to fans of the artist. ( )