Every year books appear to help families celebrate the season. Below find books made for family sharing.
Pamela Dalton’s The Story of Christmas (Chronicle) features her amazing paper cut collages that illustrate verses from the King James Bible chronicling the first Christmas.
Two keepsake renditions of Clement Moore’s The Night Before Christmas come from beautiful illustrators. Jan Brett’s version has a lovely New England town setting has a story hidden in illustrations, and a CD featuring a reading by Jim Dale and music from the Boston Pops. (Putnam). Mary Engelbreit’s has cartoony style and playful details, providing more fun than a Christmas Stocking. (HarperCollins).
Jane Ray illustrates The Twelve Days of Christmas (Candlewick) sets the song in the 1920’s, chosing an astounded young female who’s amazed by the gifts and chaos brought about by a secret admirer.
Dandi Daley Mackall, Listen to the Silent Night (Dutton, ages 3-5)
Was the night of Jesus’ birth really silent? Not according to this author who starts each page repeating fills the traditional story with noises--the whooos of a flying owl, “flip, flap, flap” of Joseph’s sandals, “the oomph! oomph! oomph!” of Bethlehem’s crowds and the “flut-flut-flutter” of angel wings.
Amy Cordova and Eugene Gollogly, Talking Eagle and the Lady of Roses (Steiner Books, ages 5-8)
Talking Eagle grows up in a small indigenous Mexico village. He’s a dreamer and healer who’s nurtured by surrounding Castillian roses. When grown he and his bride follow the Brothers of St. Francis, but when the elderly Talking Eagle sees an amazing vision, he can’t convince officials until he brings the roses of Castilla that have bloomed in December and a tilma now imprinted with “the Mother of God, Nuestra Senora, our Guadalupe.”
Linda Sue Park’s The Third Gift (Clarion, ages 5-9)
Bagram Ibatoulline pictures a spare Middle Eastern setting that fits Park’s text that tells the story of a boy who helps his father collect “tears—“the pearls of sap that seep out of a tree when the bark is cut.” The boy’s first harvest is a tear as large as a hen’s egg, scented with “a sharp, bitter sweetness” that is sold to three foreign men who add this gift of myrrh others for a baby far way.
Michael J. Rosen and Robert Sabuda, Chanukah Lights (Candlewick, ages 3 and up)
The author’s simple poetic tones and the paper engineer’s elegant illustrations transport children around the world and through time showing the spirit of the holiday everwhere from the desert to a crowded shetel.
Nick Bruel’s Bad Kitty stars in A Bad Kitty Christmas (Roaring Brook, ages 3-8)
Wild, naughty, greedy Bad Kitty gets lost in the snow and has her perspective changed by a poor elderly woman.
Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona stars in Strega Nona’s Gift (Penguin, ages 5-8) The Grandmother Witch celebrates eight special days in her small Italian village and cooks up a delicious gift for everyone.
Mary Hoffman’s Grace stars in Grace at Christmas (Dial, ages 4-6)
Only-child Grace is resentful about sharing Christmas with others until she realizes her young guest is missing home and family far away.
Jane O’Conor’s Fancy Nancy stars in Splendiferous Christmas (Harper 4-6). The girl struggles with waiting, can’t contain her usual ebullience and has to recover from an accidental broken spinning, flashing, tree topper.
Barbara Robinson’s the Herdmans star in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Harper, ages 4-8)
The famous novel is spotlights the main event in a picture book as the six Herdmans “the worst kids in the history of the world” hijack the town Christmas pageant.
Karma Wilson’s Bear stars in Bear Stays Up for Christmas (McElderry, ages 3-6)
Bear wants to hibernate, but his friends insist he join in the festivities. Sharing fun finally keeps him awake and Santa brings him a most approp present. Rhyming adds to the fun.
Doug Cushman, Christmas Eve Goodnight (Holt, ages 3-5)
This book has it all--North Pole, animals, rhyming, and sound-making! Polar bears, mice, a nutcracker, elves and gingerbread families bed down with tender goodnights and finally hear with you-know-who calling from his toy-laden sleigh—“Merry Christmas to all! And to all a…goodnight!”
Lisa Wheeler, Where, Oh Where, Is Santa Claus? (Sandpiper)
Rhythms, rhymes and refrains, and sound making that invites participation as polar animals playfully seek down Santa. There’s verve in their individual styles and a lovely buried message of working together as they dig Santa free from the snow so he can continue his holiday mission.
Erica Silverman, The Hanukkah Hop! (Simon and Schuster, ages 3-5)
Hanukkah traditions blend with the musical story and a little girl so filled with zest for holiday fun that she sings “Biddy-biddy bim-bom bim-bom bop. I’ll whirl all night at our Hanukkah Hop!” Indeed her plans are realized when bubbes and zayedes “zoom in by plane”, she devours “scrumptious, crunchy latkes” and spins like a dreidel top, wilder and wilder, until everyone’s pooped, the ballons are popped and guests snooze.
Eileen Spinelli, The Perfect Christmas (Holt, ages 4-6)
The same holiday. How does it look in different families? Abigal Archer’s “perfect” family chops their tree in the countryside and trims the house with holly and lighted candles. The narrator’s family? Their artificial tree has missing branches and one held on with tape. They trim the house with macaroni reindeer and other things from bargain. Still, as illustrations and details show the quiet beauty of a Christmas snow has all the families “laughing and dancing through the snow.”
Toni Buzzeo, Lighthouse Christmas (Dial, ages 6-9)
Christmas 1929 finds Frances and Peter, her younger brother missing their mother in a remote lighthouse off the coast of Maine. Optimistic Peter remembers and wishes for all the pleasures of past holidays, but Frances worries about filling their larder and a threatening storm that will keep them from mainland family celebrations. Frances’ fears are realized, but a rescued stranger and the responsibility of providing satisfies all. The store is based on float plane pilot William Wincapaw who launched the Flying Santa Service to bring packages and gifts to the many families on isolated islands.
Brock Cole, The Money We’ll Save (FSG, ages 5-8)
In the nineteenth-century tenements of New York, money was tight and felt tighter at Christmas. Pa, minding pennies during shopping, is given advice and a turkey they can fatten for the holiday. Except the four children name the turkey Alfred and the bird has soon outgrown his small crate and table scrap meals. Pa’s refrain, “remember the money we’re saving” doesn’t help when Alfred torments the neighborhood and controls the house. But when it comes time for the butcher, the family has a whole new problem, they can’t kill the family pet. Cole’s illustrations perfectly accompany the era, the setting and most especially Pa’s accepting loving family.
Olivier Dunrea, A Christmas Tree for Pyn (Philomel, ages 6-9)
Young Pyn lives “with a big gruff bear of a man” who insists on being called Oother, not Papa. An enthusiastic Pym readies their cottage and dreams of having a real tree for Christmas. Despite her father’s grumbling and naysaying and grudging help, Pym finds a perfect tree, decorates it with found feathers, acorns, berries and dried hornets nests. Finally Oother gives Pym a beautiful bird “made from real feathers with two black beads for eyes and two long feather streaming from behind”, a tree topper he’d once given her mother. As a final gift Oother urges Pyn to call him Papa. Papa’s unstated grief and unexpressed love and the changes that overcome him are magical conversation starters.
David Rubel, The Carpenter’s Gift: A Christmas Tale About the Rockefeller Center Tree (Random, ages 6 and up)
It’s 1931, the day before Christmas and Henry’s parents are out of work. They can’t afford coal, or warm blankets so the boy wakes up “with a shiver” and visits “warm places in his mind”. He and his father cut firs from the woods, take them to a construction site at Rockefeller Center and leave the unbought trees with the workers. “The best presents are the ones you don’t expect,” Henry thinks and then is caught in a magical moment when the tree is decorated and streetlights catch the glittering tin can decorations. He takes home a pine cone to plant and wakes the next morning to find trucks loaded with “extra wood”. These men turn their shack into a real home. And years later, in a lovely circle, the tree his pinecone has grown is chosen for the Rockefeller Center tree and its wood will provide a house for another family who needs one.
Doug Wood, Franklin and Winston: A Christmas That Changed the World (Candlewick, ages 8 and up)
Barry Moser’s dramatic illustrations capture the commonality of the two leaders, from their boyhood struggles to a shared determination to save the world. Then the story turns to the 1941 Christmas Whitehouse the men spent together—the private fun of long nights of “Winston Hours” spent talking and smoking, public speeches at the Christmas Tree lighting and days they two of them spent with other leaders, deliberating to determine a course to win the war.