On the First Day of Christmas . . .

I know you're just all dying to know where my book reviews are. I been reading more than ever, but I've only been reading Cybil Award nominees, and I feel a little weird reviewing them here before my committee announces our five finalists (although I have reviewed a few of the nominees here in the past and I'm not going to remove my reviews). At any rate, I should have lots of reviews for you in January, but in the meantime I've decided to highlight a few of my favorite Christmas books.

I love receiving holiday treats from my friends and neighbors, but Larry and I are not the best bakers so instead of spending time in the kitchen we tend to alternate gifting forced bulbs or paperback Christmas books. This year, since so many of our neighbors have little ones, I selected Santa Claus The World's Number One Toy Expert by Marla Frazee so that's the first book that I'm going to highlight. If you you don't have a copy of this book in your collection it's a great one to pick up (or maybe you'll be getting one from me).
The book begins:

Then it goes on to cover how Santa carefully prepares for Christmas and has some hilarious illustrations of Santa testing the toys. My favorite line is, "He gives the exact right toy to the exact right kid, 99.9% of the time . . . no one is perfect. Not even Santa Claus." I can picture many a parent referring to this picture book when a child is upset that Santa didn't bring them what they wanted.

The illustrations are simple with a lot of white space and the text is short so it's a great book to read with a toddler, but older kids will enjoy it too because it's really quite funny and of course Marla Frazee's Santa is very endearing.