A Christmas Story: The Book That Inspired the Hilarious Classic Film

A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana€"the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox.

The holiday film A Christmas Story, 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 It€s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

This edition of A Christmas Story 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, €œYou€ll shoot your eye out, kid€?

The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey€s Night of Golden Memories, 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.