A kid’s Christmas story over 30 years in the making is being produced by a Bracebridge man.
Snowball, A Christmas Dilemma is written and narrated online by Ian White. He has been working on the book for decades, but recently Bracebridge’s Tim Gentle has become involved in helping bring the story to the masses.
“I’ve been hearing (Ian) tell this story since I was 10 – 15 years old,” recalls Gentle. “Each time he came for a visit there was always little changes. It was always evolving.”
The book tells the story of Santa losing his magic hat on Christmas Eve, putting Christmas at risk around the world.
White has put a version online and will be reading the story to patients at SickKids Hospital tomorrow at 11:00am.
Gentle says how the story has been molded over the years is what has attracted him to the project to help bring it to a wider audience.
“So the craftsmanship of the story and being a wordy myself I really found it a compelling story,” says Gentle. “Part of the reason he has been tinkering with it for 30 years is cause he is always seeing improvements.”
Gentle says the version online is the best yet, but he would like to take it further. He says with Ian at age 80 he wants to move quickly to get a final version recorded.
“We’d ideally like with a little bit of support to go back into the studio, be able to take our time and really make it the way it needs to be,” he says.
Ian White will be reading the story which will be live-streamed tomorrow at 4:30pm through the Facebook page for the book and links for a recorded version of the story are on the page as well – you can find the link here.