A Small Miracle

 
 

A Small Miracle

by Peter Collington 

Knopf

1997

 

 

I'm visiting relatives for the holidays, and my little niece has a current favorite book. At her request, someone has read it to her several times a day for the past few days, and I've taken a turn as well!

 

A Small Miracle is made like, and employs the painted art style of, other children's picture books, but Collington also put several frames on each page to tell a sequential story - so secretly, it's also a comic. This is a wordless book, so the entire story is told through the art.

 

On a cold winter morning, an old woman wakes up in her small wooden house. There's frost on the windows and holes in the floor. She checks her stove, but she's out of fuel. There's no food either, and no money to buy more. She wraps up in a coat and shawl, and takes her accordion, and goes outside. We see that her house is a wagon at the edge of a field by the woods. Based on the visual cues, I think the old woman is Roma.

 

She walks across several snow-covered fields and passes a church before she gets to town. It looks like she's somewhere in Europe, or maybe Britain, in something like the present day. She sees someone unloading a nativity display from the back of their car. Despite the snow, the town is bustling with people out shopping. She sets up between two shops and plays her accordion, but everyone passes her by. She falls asleep, and when she wakes up, it's nearing the end of the day. She has no money from playing, so she sells her accordion at the pawn shop.

 

As she leaves the shop, a thief on a motorbike drives by and snatches her purse. She follows the trail of his bike through the snow, and sees that he's gone into the church. He bursts out the front door on his bike holding a donation bucket, but the old woman grabs it and wrestles it from him, then rushes into the church and locks the door. She sees that he's knocked over the nativity display. She puts the bucket back and sets the nativity scene back up. She checks outside and the thief has left, so she starts her long walk home.

 

Along the way, she collapses in a field. The colors go from afternoon, to evening, to night. The woman's body is progressively covered by a blanket of snow. It's at this point that the titular small miracle occurs. (I think? You could also read this as the moment of the old woman's death, and what happens next as her symbolic welcome into the afterlife. But for the purposes of reading aloud to kid, it's definitely a miracle!)

 

The figures from the nativity scene - Mary and Joseph, baby Jesus, and the three Wise Men - come to life and rush from the church to the field. They lift the old woman and carry her to her wagon. They put her to bed. Mary and the baby Jesus sit by her bedside to comfort her. Joseph sets to work chopping wood for her stove. 

 

The three Wise Men take their gifts to the pawn shop, where the shopkeeper is thrilled by the gold and gives them a big handful of money. They buy back the accordion and then head to the grocery store. The other shoppers are like, very lightly surprised, but like the pawn shop owner, accept the little walking statues with remarkable aplomb.

 

Back at the wagon, there's fire in the stove, and Joseph is busy repairing the hole in the floor and any other flaws in the woodwork. The Wise Men cook the woman some dinner, and set out the accordion and remaining cash where she can find them. All the nativity figures leave to return to the church. The old woman wakes up, and is hugely surprised to see that she has warmth, and food, and money, and even her accordion back!

 

Contained in this story, I think, is a message from Collington about the worth and dignity of ethnic minorities, and about the proper use of the church's resources.