{"product_id":"a-christmas-story-isbn-9780767916226","title":"A Christmas Story","description":"\u003cb\u003eA beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that   inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox.\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The holiday film \u003ci\u003eA Christmas Story\u003c\/i\u003e,   first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature   and fame with each succeeding year.  Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic   portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town   Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal   to \u003ci\u003eIt’s a Wonderful Life\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMiracle on 34th Street\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This edition of \u003ci\u003eA Christmas   Story\u003c\/i\u003e gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor   that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film.  Here is young Ralphie   Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine;   his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the   unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies   Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign   to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range   model air rifle.  Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot   your eye out, kid”?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The pieces that comprise \u003ci\u003eA Christmas Story\u003c\/i\u003e, previously published   in the larger collections \u003ci\u003eIn God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWanda Hickey’s   Night of Golden Memories\u003c\/i\u003e, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible   piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart   and tickle the funny bone.For many years a cult radio and cabaret personality in New York City, \u003cb\u003eJean Shepherd\u003c\/b\u003e was the creator of the popular film \u003ci\u003eA Christmas Story\u003c\/i\u003e, which is based on his novels \u003ci\u003eIn God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories\u003c\/i\u003e, and which has become a holiday tradition on the Turner Network.  Jean Shepherd passed away in 1999.DUEL IN THE SNOW, OR RED RYDER NAILS THE  CLEVELAND STREET KID\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e DISARM THE TOY INDUSTRY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrinted in angry block red letters the slogan gleamed out from the large white   button like a neon sign. I carefully reread it to make sure that I had not made a   mistake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e DISARM THE TOY INDUSTRY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That's what it said. There was no question   about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The button was worn by a tiny Indignant-type little old lady wearing what   looked like an upturned flowerpot on her head and, I suspect (viewing it from this   later date) a pair of Ked tennis shoes on her feet, which were primly hidden by the   Automat table at which we both sat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I, toying moodily with my chicken pot pie, which   of course is a specialty of the house, surreptitiously examined my fellow citizen   and patron of the Automat. Wiry, lightly powdered, tough as spring steel, the old   doll dug with Old Lady gusto into her meal. Succotash, baked beans, creamed corn,   side order of Harvard beets. Bad news—a Vegetarian type. No doubt also a dedicated   Cat Fancier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Silently we shared our tiny Automat table as the great throng of pre-Christmas   quick-lunchers eddied and surged in restless excitement all around us. Of course   there were the usual H \u0026amp; H club members spotted here and there in the mob; out-of-work   seal trainers, borderline bookies, ex-Opera divas, and panhandlers trying hard to   look like Madison Avenue account men just getting out of the cold for a few minutes.   It is an Art, the ability to nurse a single cup of coffee through an entire ten-hour   day of sitting out of the biting cold of mid-December Manhattan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And so we sat,   wordlessly as is the New York custom, for long moments until I could not contain   myself any longer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Disarm the Toy Industry?\" I tried for openers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She sat unmoved,   her bright pink and ivory dental plates working over a mouthful of Harvard beets,   attacking them with a venom usually associated with the larger carnivores. The red   juice ran down over her powdered chin and stained her white lace bodice. I tried   again:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Pardon me, Madam, you're dripping.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Eh?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her ice-blue eyes flickered   angrily for a moment and then glowed as a mother hen's looking upon a stunted, dwarfed   offspring. Love shone forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Thank you, sonny.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She dabbed at her chin with a   paper napkin and I knew that contact had been made. Her uppers clattered momentarily   and in an unmistakably friendly manner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Disarm the Toy Industry?\" I asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It's   an outrage!\" she barked, causing two elderly gentlemen at the next table to spill   soup on their vests. Loud voices are not often heard in the cloistered confines of   the H \u0026amp; H.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It's an outrage the way the toymakers are forcing the implements of   blasphemous War on the innocent children, the Pure in Spirit, the tiny babes who   are helpless and know no better!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her voice at this point rising to an Evangelical   quaver, ringing from change booth to coffee urn and back again. Four gnarled atheists   three tables over automatically, by reflex action alone, hurled four \"Amen's\" into   the unanswering air. She continued:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It's all a Government plot to prepare the Innocent   for evil, Godless War! I know what they're up to! Our Committee is on to them, and   we intend to expose this decadent Capitalistic evil!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She spoke in the ringing,   anvil-like tones of a True Believer, her whole life obviously an unending fight against   They, the plotters. She clawed through her enormous burlap handbag, worn paperback   volumes of Dogma spilling out upon the floor as she rummaged frantically until she   found what she was searching for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Here, sonny. Read this. You'll see what I mean.\"   She handed me a smudgy pamphlet from some embattled group of Right Thinkers, based—of   course—in California, denouncing the U.S. as a citadel of Warmongers, profit-greedy   despoilers of the young and promoters of world-wide Capitalistic decadence, all through   plastic popguns and Sears Roebuck fatigue suits for tots.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She stood hurriedly, scooping   her dog-eared library back into her enormous rucksack and hurled her parting shot:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Those who eat meat, the flesh of our fellow creatures, the innocent slaughtered   lamb of the field, are doing the work of the Devil!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her gimlet eyes spitted the   remains of my chicken pot pie with naked malevolence. She spun on her left Ked and   strode militantly out into the crisp, brilliant Christmas air and back into the fray.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I sat rocking slightly in her wake for a few moments, stirring my lukewarm coffee   meditatively, thinking over her angry, militant slogan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e DISARM THE TOY INDUSTRY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A single word floated into my mind's arena for just an instant—\"Canal water!\"—and   then disappeared. I thought on: As if the Toy industry has any control over the insatiable   desire of the human spawn to own Weaponry, armaments, and the implements of Warfare.   It's the same kind of mind that thought if making whiskey were prohibited people   would stop drinking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I began to mull over my own youth, and, of course, its unceasing   quest for roscoes, six-shooters, and any sort of blue hardware—simulated or otherwise—that   I could lay my hands on. It is no coincidence that the Zip Green was invented by   kids. The adolescent human carnivore is infinitely ingenious when confronted with   a Peace movement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Outside in the spanking December breeze a Salvation Army Santa   Claus listlessly tolled his bell, huddled in a doorway to avoid the direct blast   of the wind. I sipped my coffee and remembered another Christmas, in another time,   in another place, and . . . a gun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I remember clearly, itchingly, nervously, maddeningly   the first time I laid eyes on it, pictured in a three-color, smeared illustration   in a full-page back cover ad in Open Road For Boys, a publication which at the time   had an iron grip on my aesthetic sensibilities, and the dime that I had to scratch   up every month to stay with it. It was actually an early Playboy. It sold dreams,   fantasies, incredible adventures, and a way of life. Its center foldouts consisted   of gigantic Kodiak bears charging out of the page at the reader, to be gunned down   in single hand-to-hand combat by the eleven-year-old Killers armed only with hunting   knife and fantastic bravery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Its Christmas issue weighed over seven pounds, its   pages crammed with the effluvia of the Good Life of male Juvenalia, until the senses   reeled and Avariciousness, the growing desire to own Everything, was almost unbearable.   Today there must be millions of ex-subscribers who still can't pass Abercrombie \u0026amp;   Fitch without a faint, keening note of desire and the unrequited urge to glom on   to all of it. Just to have it, to feel it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Early in the Fall the ad first appeared.   It was a magnificent thing of balanced copy and pictures, superb artwork, and subtly   contrived catch phrases. I was among the very first hooked, I freely admit it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e BOYS! AT LAST YOU CAN OWN AN OFFICIAL RED RYDER CARBINE ACTION TWO-HUNDRED SHOT   RANGE MODEL AIR RIFLE!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This in block red and black letters surrounded by a large   balloon coming out of Red Ryder's own mouth, wearing his enormous ten-gallon Stetson,   his jaw squared, staring out at me manfully and speaking directly to me, eye to eye.   In his hand was the knurled stock of as beautiful, as coolly deadly-looking a piece   of weaponry as I'd ever laid eyes on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e YES, FELLOWS. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Red Ryder continued   under the gun:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e YES, FELLOWS, THIS TWO-HUNDRED-SHOT CARBINE ACTION AIR RIFLE, JUST   LIKE THE ONE I USE IN ALL MY RANGE WARS CHASIN' THEM RUSTLERS AND BAD GUYS CAN BE   YOUR VERY OWN! IT HAS A SPECIAL BUILT-IN SECRET COMPASS IN THE STOCK FOR TELLING   THE DIRECTION IF YOU'RE LOST ON THE TRAIL, AND ALSO AN OFFICIAL RED RYDER SUNDIAL   FOR TELLING TIME OUT IN THE WILDS. YOU JUST LAY YOUR CHEEK 'GAINST THIS STOCK, SIGHT   OVER MY OWN SPECIAL DESIGN CLOVERLEAF SIGHT, AND YOU JUST CAN'T MISS. TELL DAD IT'S   GREAT FOR TARGET SHOOTING AND VARMINTS, AND IT WILL MAKE A SWELL CHRISTMAS GIFT!!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The next issue arrived and Red Ryder was even more insistent, now implying that   the supply of Red Ryder BB guns was limited and to order now or See Your Dealer Before   It's Too Late!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was the second ad that actually did the trick on me. It was late   November and the Christmas fever was well upon me. I thought about a Red Ryder air   rifle in all my waking hours, seven days a week, in school and out. I drew pictures   of it in my Reader, in my Arithmetic book, on my hand in indelible ink, on Helen   Weathers' dress in front of me, in crayon. For the first time in my life the initial   symptoms of genuine lunacy, of Mania, set in.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303940444389,"sku":"NP9780767916226","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767916226.jpg?v=1767720360","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-christmas-story-isbn-9780767916226","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}