short summary on the best christimas present in the world.

 ‘The Best Christmas Present in the World’ is a touching short story by Michael Morpurgo. With its short text and beautiful illustrations by Michael Foreman, it looks like a children’s book. The serious themes and elegant writing style, however, are more suitable for young teens.

The story begins when the narrator discovers an old letter while tidying up. He opens it.

“I knew as I did it that it was wrong of me to open the box, but curiosity got the better of my scruples. It usually does.”

He reads about a strange event that happened during World War I (1914-1918) and sets out to return the letter to its elderly owner.

Just when you think you understand the meaning of the title, the writer introduces a twist that reveals another ‘best present’. The ending is both heartbreaking and uplifting.

 brutal. The trenches were often filled with mud. Disease and death were everywhere.

On Christmas Eve on 1914, near the town of Ypres, the German soldiers started decorating their trenches and singing Christmas carols. When the British soldiers recognised the tune of one of the songs—Stille Nacht (Silent Night)—they responded with carols of their own. Before long, all fighting stopped. Soldiers from the two sides visited each other and exchanged gifts such as whiskey and chocolate. Both sides collected their dead from the no man’s land between the trenches and held a funeral service together. The two sides even played a football match on the battlefield.

The commanders of both armies were unhappy. Their soldiers were supposed to be fighting to the death, not trying to score goals. They soon ordered the soldiers back to their trenches to begin fighting once again.

The real-life story of the Christmas Truce shows what can happen if we recognise the common bonds we share with all people. When soldiers can lay down their weapons and embrace the enemy, even if it is just for one brief moment, there is hope that one day war will fade into distant memory and peace will reign around the world.

 Michael Morpugo has recently uploaded a complete audio version of the book onto his website 

The book is particularly good for second language learners. It is short and relatively easy to read, but every page contains at least one challenging word or phrase (like “got the better of my scruples”) that can help them improve their English skills.

The Christmas Truce

The letter in the story describes a real event—The Christmas Truce of 1914 For years, two of the main combatants in WWI, Britain and Germany, were involved in a brutal kind of fighting known as trench warfare. Life as a soldier in the trenches was