MommaReads

The magic of Christmas is getting closer and closer and Santa is beginning to feel a tingle in his toes. That tingle signals Santa that it’s time to trim his beard, get the sleigh ready, polish the bells and check his book. This is such a beautiful book. I love how the author depicts Santa getting ready and how the reindeer can’t fly until just the right moment when the magic happens. Even if you’re not a huge Santa book fan, the illustrations in this book will warm your heart.

Little Wolf is having a very difficult time falling asleep and he needs a teddy bear to cuddle with to get the job done. The trouble is, he doesn’t have one, so he sets off into the woods to look for one. He meets all kinds of people in the woods who mistake him for a big, bad wolf until he finally runs into a plump old man in a red suit that needs him to huff and puff and blow up a flat tire. Turns out that plump man in a red suit knows exactly how to get a teddy bear and he sends Little Wolf home with promises that in the morning he will have one.

Inspector McSqueaks uses all of his high-tech gadgets, like a Sleigh-Bell-Sound-Sensor-Machine to try and catch Santa in the act, but despite his best efforts and his best technology, Santa is always just one step ahead of him. Not only is this an adorable story, but it rhymes too and I am a sucker for cute stories that rhyme. I got this book a couple of years ago as a Christmas present from one of my preschool students. I absolutely love it and it is one of our favorite Christmas books.

P.S. This isn’t a book you are going to be able to find at the library or even at Amazon. It is a Hallmark book, so if you are interested in finding it I would start there. I asked the people at Hallmark via Twitter where readers would be able to find it. I am just waiting for an answer.

That Cat may eat all of their food and take all of the goodies out of their Christmas stockings, but he will soon learn not to mess with the mice. The mice come up with a plan, after consulting the resident old wise rat, and soon the mice are able to play and scurry about without having to worry about that mean old cat sneaking up on them. It’s a problem that one little jingly bell can solve.

Rebecca Bloom is preparing her famous latkes on the first night of Hanukkah when three of the latkes jump out of the pan and escape. Rebecca, the cantor, the rabbi, even the mayor end up chasing after the latkes to the edge of town. You’ll never guess what happens once they jump into the river, but everyone does end up getting to eat some yummy latkes with applesauce. Not only is this a cute story, but I love that the latkes repeat the same line on every page. This is great for beginning readers as they can help you read along with the story. This feature is also great for little ones, too. They love to hear the repetition and it won’t take them long until they are chiming in with you every time you get to that part of the story.

Any author who can bring the magic of a holiday alive in the form of a haiku is going to spark my interest. Not only does this book deliver, but the illustrations are vibrant and beautiful. The haiku format is creative, keeps things simple so that the youngest children will enjoy and understand the basics of Hanukkah and it might even spark the older children into trying to come up with their own Hanukkah haikus.

My own kids are slowly growing out of me reading them pictures books, but when they were younger I would sometimes pick up a book at the library that wasn’t just a story with pictures, but a story that was actually a song…a story meant to be sung. Our oldest liked these books, our youngest did not. Our youngest would politely say, “Just read it, Mom.” Well, this is one of those books. A very cute story about a bunch of aardvark angels that help the post office get all of the Christmas mail to all the corners of the earth and, yes, you have to sing it. 🙂

Thanksgiving poems that are cute, clever and probably easy enough to read that your early reader might be able to tackle them on their own. Poems are also great for early readers because the rhyming helps them predict/figure out what unknown words might be and poems aren’t usually long and cumbersome. It takes a lot of energy and concentration to figure out all of those words when children are first beginning to read, so poems are a great way to practice reading and fluency with something short that won’t tucker them out too fast. A sense of accomplishment is something you always want to strive for with early readers and poems are a great way to achieve that goal.

Dee donates a can of peas to her school’s food drive and it turns out that her class is going to get to go help serve a Thanksgiving meal at the same place where all of their donated food went. While she is there Dee saves the day by making her “famous” vegetable medley dish and she also makes a friend. This is a great way to show children that donating food is important and that is does actually go somewhere and get used by others. This book would be such a great springboard for some great discussions.

If you have a little history buff in your house, then they will love this historical fiction that tells how Abraham Lincoln pardoned the first turkey because his son, Tad, mistakenly had thought it was a pet and had grown so attached to it that he couldn’t bare to see it on their Thanksgiving table. It all ends well and they end up having ham and chicken instead.