Build a holiday tradition by reading a holiday story to ease stress, accent excitement, and find family connection. These new holiday books can brighten the season.
"I Have a Little Dreidel." (Scholastic, $9.99, ages 3-6) by Maxie Baum begins with the original lyrics, then adds eight more verses, to celebrate traditions like making latkes and lighting the menorah. Julie Paschkis' illustrations are bright, warm and family-oriented.
Pop-up master, Robert Sabuda, re-releases "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (Little Simon, $26.95), honoring each verse with a glorious paper design.
Thomas Kinkade's Silent Night (HarperCollins, $16.99) honors the quiet carol with the context of an old-fashioned New England holiday.
Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas" appears in six new versions!
Matt Tavare's realistic monochromes remember the Victorian times in which the poem was first published.(Candlewick, $8.99, all ages)
Richard Jesse Watson fancies Santa clad in leather aviator helmet, guiding his tiny elves to organize holiday bliss before all ascend into a plane-like sleigh. (HarperCollins, $16.99)
Mary Engelbreit's homey details make for a cozy read. (HarperCollins, $16.99)
Gennady Spirin accents magic and warmth from his welcoming hearth to gold touches on the reindeer's harnesses. (Marshall Cavendish, $16.99)
Carter Goodrich's "A Creature Was Stirring: One Boy's Night Before Christmas" (Simon and Schuster, $16.95) compliments the traditional with a new ode recounting adventures of a sleepless boy on Christmas night.
Christine Ford and Trish Holland's "The Soldiers' Night Before Christmas" (Random, 8.99) is a humorous retelling in the viewpoint of an American Soldier in the Middle East-- the perfect gift for a military family.
O. Henry's classic story of holiday giving, "The Gift of the Magi (Simon and Schuster, $15.99; ages 8 to adult) is elegantly illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger with simple line drawings and water colors.
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (Candlewick, $19.99) P.J. Lynch's monochromatic style is a great match for the1843 classic.
Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" (Knopf, $17.95) A 50th anniversary edition is tenderly rendered by Beth Peck and packaged with a CD by Celeste Holm.
Mary Engelbreit's distinctive warmth fills the Christmas rhyming alphabetic pages of "A Merry Little Christmas" (HarperCollins, $16.99) from the tree-top angel to "the zillion ways " Christmas brings cheer.
Michael Rosen's paperback, "Chanukah Lights Everywhere" (Voyager Books, $6.00, ages 3-6) shows a young Jewish boy counting lights everywhere as he imagines the world joining him in celebrating this season of lights.
In Helen Recorvits' "Yoon and the Christmas Mitten" (FSG, $16.00, ages 5-8), Young Korean immigrant Yoon becomes enchanted by her classmates descriptions of Christmas. She wants Santa to visit her house and bring gifts but her parents insist "We are not a Christmas family", promising her instead the fun of Korean New Year. Gabi Swiatkowska's beautiful illustrations show how this family lovingly works out cultural differences and merges the fun of both holidays.
Discss the real meaning of Christmas with Elizabeth Winthrop's "The First Christmas Stocking" (Delacorte, $16.95, ages 7 to adult). Claire, a poor child makes extraordinary stockings because her loving mother's told her to "knit her dreams into wool". Claire hopes to sell stockings to bring warmth to her father after her mother's death, but gives up this possibility to give to a child less fortunate. Christmas brings a miracle stocking stuffed with all she wanted.
Start a conversation about all kinds of holidays with books that show a spectrum of celebrations. Jan Reynolds' "Celebrate! Connections Among Cultures" (Lee and Low, $16.95, ages 6-9) shows the commonality of food, gathering, music and dance in cultures from South America's Yanomami to Tibetan Sherpas!
Deborah Heiligman's Holidays Around the World series leaves you lots of room to make culture connections. Begin with "Celebrate Hanukkah". Gorgeous full page illustrations feature celebrants from around the world, simple text accents principles and the story. Six pages of supplemental information tells everything from menorah prayers to offering websites. Follow up with Heiligman's intriguing books that explore Muslim and Hindu holidays in "Celebrate Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr" and "Celebrate Diwali". (all from National Geographic, $15.95, ages 5-9)
Spirit transcends time as we see in Stephen Krensky's "Hanukkah at Valley Forge" (Dutton, $17.99) as Washington meets a Jewish immigrant and makes connections between the Revolutionary War and the Maccabees struggle with the Roman soldiers. Greg Harlin's illustrations glow like a lamp that won't ever go out!
Too much down time and too little to do? Ponder the pages of "Spot 7 Christmas" (Chronicle, 12.95, ages 5-8). Two bright cheerful pages full of holiday-themed photographs face each other, but there are seven changes from one page to the next. Can you find all seven?
Find laughter, the greatest stress reliever, in the collaboration of the wacky team of writer Mike Reiss and illustrator David Catrow in "Merry Un-Christmas" (HarperCollins, $15.99, ages 4-8). Noelle lives in Christmas City, Texmas where she welcomes Un-Christmas when she gets to go to school, watch Oprah instead of holiday shows, and eat TV dinners instead of turkey!
Need adult laughter? Find it in Allen Salkin's audio, "Festivus:The Holiday for the Rest of Us" (Hachette, $19.98, 2 CDs). Introduction by Ben Stiller starts the humor initiated on the Seinfeld show read by a funny cast!