Christmas Reading

We have been reading lots of Christmas books lately. Actually we started reading Christmas books probably the week of Thanksgiving but now it seems to be all we read. I secretly bought a few Christmas books from Gabrielle's monthly Scholastic book orders and the book fair. This past week we made a trip to the library to check out some new books. Our excellent librarians had already pulled all of the Christmas books and had them conveniently on a cart. We came home with 21 children Christmas books!! Don't worry - there were plenty of good books remaining on the cart for everyone else.

I am no expert on giving a book review but we have read so many good ones lately I wanted to share our favorites.

Gabrielle's favorite book is probably "The Gingerbread Man" by Jim Aylesworth. She loves gingerbread men anyway and when I saw this book I realized she probably had never heard the original story so I had to buy it. We have read this book at least a dozen times in the past week. It is the classic story of the Gingerbread Man who is chased by various characters, only to be outwitted and eaten by the fox. The illustrations have this old fashion look to them.


Samantha's favorite book is a board book I bought when Gabrielle was 15 months old, for her second Christmas. It is a simple story but perfect for a toddler. "Christmas in the Manger" by Nora Buck and Felicia Bond is a short and simple board book with cute pictures telling the true reason for Christmas. Samantha loves to say "baa" at the picture of the ram, "moo" at the photo of the oxen, "shiny" at the foil star and of course "baby" for baby Jesus. We read this one almost every night before bed.


Another cute board book we checked out from the library is "Down Through the Chimney." The book originally comes with a CD which has a narrator reading the story as well as singing the song. Unfortunately the disk was lost with the library's copy but the book itself is really cute too. Samantha loves seeing Ho-Ho.


Some of Gabrielle's other favorites from the library are "Reindeer Christmas", "The Christmas Hat" and "The Christmas Humbugs" (my favorite out of the bunch we have read so far). All very cute stories.




If you are looking for a book true to the Christmas story scripture but on a child's level I definitely recommend "My First Story of Christmas" by Tim Dowley. I found this recommendation last year from Proverbs 31 and ordered a last minute Christmas gift for the girls. I let them have it on Christmas Eve so we could read the Christmas story before bed that night. We have already read it once or twice this year but I will definitely make it a tradition to read it every Christmas Eve.

With all the Christmas books for the girls I decided I wouldn't mind something on my level as well so I too checked out a couple of novels from the library. In one evening I read the short novel "Miracle on I-40" by Curtiss Ann Matlock. It was an excellent (and quick) read in which part of the story takes place near Raleigh, NC - which was the first thing that peaked my interest about the book. I had not planned to read it one sitting but as I sat down to read I could not find a good place to stop, I wanted to know what happened next.


Both myself and the girls still have a pile and a list of books we want to read this Christmas season. If we come across any other favorites I'll be sure to share those as well!