Finished The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote. This one is darker than A Christmas Memory. Buddy is plagued by a bully at school. His elderly cousin, Miss Sook, invites the bully to Thanksgiving dinner hoping to remedy the situation. Things go from bad to worse. Like the other story this one is very honest. At one point Buddy calls the bully a sonofabitch, at school in front of the teacher. Obviously this is not well received. I'm not used to seeing a word like that in a children's book. After some additional research I found that these stories were not originally intended for a young audience, but are now packaged and illustrated for children. I'm glad the publisher kept them intact.
The illustrator for both books I borrowed from the library is Beth Peck. Her illustrations for A Christmas Memory were done in watercolor. They are delicate and lovingly detailed. Her illustrations for The Thanksgiving Visitor were done in pastels. While the detail is less fine, the texture of the pictures makes the facial expressions and general mood raw and thus more keenly felt. I like these better.
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