Christmas story as told by HeeHaw, the donkey

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WAANDERS PUBLISHERS, ZWOLLE 3

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T

his is me, Hee-haw. I’m

going to tell you a story. Not just any old story – a really amazing story. I promise. You’re going to see the most beautiful paintings and drawings in the world too. You’ll probably be surprised to see how many pictures I’m in. Hundreds – no, thousands! And that’s because I, Hee-haw, play a very important part in this story.

So many artists have painted me that I’m not only a world-famous supermodel, I also know an awful lot about art. There’s not a

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single painter I don’t know about. I know every colour of paint there is. And I can smell from several metres away if a painting is a fake. I always know which country a painting was made in, and I can tell you exactly when.

Why? Because I was always there! I would love to share everything I know about art and artists, because I’m such a kind and generous donkey.

Oh yes, I meant to say: I’ve written in the back of the book who made each painting in the story, when they made it and what museum you can see it in.

This is me again – ten of me!

I was drawn by Jan, a painter from the country we now call Belgium, but it wasn’t called that then. He was practising until he could draw a donkey (me!) really well. Jan kept asking me to do things: ‘Eyes wide open, eyes closed a little bit, head up, head down, ears forward, ears back.’ Can you move your ears?

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A practice drawing like this is called a sketch. Usually it’s made quickly, with a pencil on paper. But Jan didn’t use a pencil for this sketch, he used oil paints. And he used a flat piece of wood instead of paper.

Painters call that a panel. Jan made this sketch when he was getting ready to make a painting.

While Jan was painting me he suddenly burst out laughing. I couldn’t see what was so funny. Me standing there all serious and quiet as a mouse, and he’s sitting there laughing his head off.

‘I just thought of a joke’, he explained once he could talk again. ‘What has six legs, four eyes, two heads, and a tail?

A man sitting on a donkey.’ Yeah, yeah, really funny - not.

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ally er re all v e n e y, I’v Jan drew . e wa e y By th tood wh nd m . s arou s r a s e e y l d e un onk l of f l m u e f e thos ey’re all th t n, th ky! Why a a e g Im ee okin so ch n, lo n’t a s d i e n A s? I m s enough ns y e k tio mon s of me i posi re rent pictu en diffe t too!! it? In

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I wasn’t just boasting when I was talking about how often I’ve been painted. Horses might be bigger, but we donkeys really are the stars in art. Just look at all these drawings and paintings. Which one do you think shows me best?

The Romans loved floors made with tiny stones. They’re called mosaics. They ‘laid’ me in a floor too, with bunches of grapes and some strange bird.

In China the artist Huang Zhou drew me using just a few simple strokes of ink on paper.

You have to be a really good painter to do that.

This picture shows me working as a ‘beast of burden’. That just means I carry a lot of stuff.

This painting is by a Brazilian artist. They love donkeys there, too, and not only because we’re so good at carrying things.

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It was night in all the places in my dream.

But the sky was very clear, just like it was on the heath. Sometimes there were lots of stars, and sometimes none.

Here I was dreaming about a Japanese water temple. But I didn’t know that then. I thought it was a climbing frame. The artist, Kawase Hasui, didn’t mind when I told him that years later. I think he thought I was nice, and he invited me to come and see how he made his pictures. He drew this temple on a piece of wood, using ink.

Then he pressed the wood onto paper while the ink was still wet. The print on the paper is called a woodcut.

Kawase gave me this woodcut as a present. It hangs in the stable and I look at it every day.

The dream continued. Suddenly I wasn’t a donkey anymore, I was a bird flying through the clear night sky over a shining river.

And then I swooped between the trees. It was fantastic. I just had to follow the moon and the stars, and everything else just worked out by itself.

These two paintings were

made by Dutch artists around the same time, about 110 years ago. What do you think: were they trying to paint the trees and rivers as they really are in nature, or did they want to do something else? Something unique and modern?

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After the temple and the trees, I flew across a starry sky, brighter than I’d ever seen before. It seemed to be sprinkled with diamonds that twinkled like they were winking at me.

You might know the name of the artist who made this painting: Vincent van Gogh. It’s my favourite painting, even though I’m not in it.

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There were people everywhere who had stayed up to look at the sky. There were even people looking at the stars through binoculars and telescopes. Did they think one was going to fall out of the sky? What was so special about that anyway? We donkeys see that every night out on the heath. Whoosh…. another star shooting across the sky. And then you can make a wish. Maybe these people were hoping that a miracle was going to happen.

That something would drop down from the sky. Like I said, I didn’t understand the dream at all, but of course I’m just a simple animal, even though I am a donkey.

I stopped for a rest here, and heard an owl hooting. Because I was a bird, I tried to call back to the owl, but instead of a lovely tweeting sound, I made the sound of a donkey: heeeeehaw, heeee-haw…. heeee-haw.

People call this sound ‘braying’. I’ve never really understood why.

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I immediately heard clear voices answering me, from very high in the sky. I looked up and… wow, they looked like angels! What a fantastic dream! But they didn’t just look like angels, they really were angels! I’d never seen one before, but I knew for sure they were angels. They swirled down through the air. Then we started to hear a heavenly sound.

Before I carry on with the story, I’d like to tell you something about this picture. Yes indeed, it’s an etching, we know that now – you can even see the scratches made with the needle.

But do you know who made it? Have you ever heard of The Night Watch? It’s a very famous painting, made by the same artist as this etching. The most famous painter in the Netherlands:

Rembrandt! This etching is by Rembrandt too.

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My brother Puck gave me a poke. ‘Do you hear that Hee-haw?’, he said. The dream was over, I was wide awake. This was real.

You could see right through the angels, and they were so soft, so sweet. Their voices sounded like softly tinkling bells.

It was the sweetest sound my big donkey ears had ever heard.

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