“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams

Arthur’s Christmas Cookies

Words and Pictures by Lillian Hoban

Arthur’s Christmas Cookies is part of the successful Arthur series. The series was part of the “I Can Read” book published by HarperTrophy which is a Division of HarperCollins Publihers.. 

Arthur is a chimpanzee and he lives with his parents and a little sister named Violet.  As the book opens, Violet is making her Mother a Christmas gift. Arthur starts explaining how the gifts that he made had not worked out so well. It was decided that Arthur would make cookies using his sister’s E-Z bake oven.  Some friends come over while Arthur and Violet are getting ready to bake the cookies and they help gather the ingredients.  When the cookies are baked, it was discovered that a mistake was made and the cookies were made with salt instead of sugar.  Arthur feels terrible about the mistake but then he sees that it will work out well. 

The Arthur books were created by Lillian Hoban. She also collaborated on many other books including series about Francis which she illustrated and her husband wrote. (They divorced after the books were published.)The first of the Francis series was illustrated by Garth Williams but Lillian Hoban illustrated the rest of the series. The first Francis book was Bedtime for Francis. It was such a success that the rest of the books also started with a “B” word. (Mr. Hoban was superstitious.)

Ms Hoban died in 1998 at the age of 73.  (In contrast to Bernard Wiseman from yesterday, I could find a picture and some personal information about Ms. Hoban.) 

Thanks for reading!