Christmas Books for Children

We have a big Christmas box that we pull out of the attic at the start of each December which includes several Christmas books. There is something really lovely about only reading these books in the run up to Christmas and I really enjoy seeing my children remember little bits of them and grow into and out of the different tales. There are so many wonderful Christmas books, but I wanted to give a very small taste of three of them that I’d highly recommend to anybody looking for seasonal stories for their children for this time of year.

First of all we have a selection of four different stories from the master of storytelling, Michael Morpurgo, in his Christmas Stories. Illustrated by Sophie Allsop, Emma Chichester Clark, Michael Foreman and Quentin Blake, these four tales range from a young boy’s quest to save the goose that he is meant to be helping fatten for Christmas dinner to a a fictionalised account of the infamous football match that brought together warring men in the trenches of the First World War. The illustrations are all beautiful and unique and there is something in this book for all ages.

I love Jane Ray’s illustrations, laced with gold and filled with exquisite details which are sure to enchant any child. This Story of Christmas is the Nativity narrative for those who want a traditional Christmas tale, charting the movements of all those who converge on Bethlehem but also filled with the darker threat of King Herod…

‘…Now King Herod was troubled when he heard of this other kind, more powerful than himself. And he sent for the wise men, saying, “Go and search for the child and return to me once you have found him, so that I too may come and worship him.” But the King meant to do him harm…’

I bought The Christmas Mystery before I even had children as I was such a big fan of Norweigan writer’s philosophy masterpiece ‘Sophie’s World.’ Apparently the Norweigan version of The Christmas Mystery is far more of an aesthetic treat as the book is designed just like an advent calendar. Despite that (because I certainly can’t read Norweigan!), I love this book and so do my children. We read one chapter each day of advent and it is a multi-layered tale of a young boy named Joachim who is given a magic advent calendar and finds himself reading about a girl called Elisabet Hansen who travels backwards through time to the birth of Christ from a small town in Norway to Bethlehem. But then Joachim discovers that a young girl by that name really did go missing from that town in the 1940’s. But it’s only a story….or is it?