Holiday Books

I love books! I love old books, I love new books, I love the smell of crisp pages, I love the sight of old book bindings sitting on a shelf. And most of all, I love the tradition books create in a family. I grew up with a great old pop-up version of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and of all the Christmas objects we unpacked out of bins every December, that was my favorite thing to see each year. My mom even has a video of me reading it to Trina and Wayne when I was about 8. And I still have that book. I think my mom understood that it was most meaningful to me, so I got to take it with me when I got married. It’s sitting on my shelf of Christmas books right now, waiting to be read this season. I actually bought a new Twas the Night Before Christmas book a few years ago from Hallmark because it was so pretty—it’s a Santa and Coke version and I love the illustrations.

Some of my best memories of being a kid are road trips and my mom reading out loud to us from the Bobbsey Twins and Little House books. We took lots of trips to visit cousins and we always read our favorite family books along the way. I’ve been collecting vintage Bobbsey Twins books for a few years now, and I still have the Little House set that was mine as a kid. And I have found some great versions of American classics like Pollanna, the Little Princess, Swiss Family Robinson and other stories I loved as a kid. And I have extremely vintage copies of The Wizard of Oz (my favorite story ever, well, tied with Little Women) and Charlotte’s Web (shout-out to Gretchen and her annual book report!). I have boxes and boxes of children’s books.

Now that I have my own family, I’m trying to create holiday traditions through some books with them too. I’m probably going a little overboard though. I found great books of little poems for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day by Jack Prelutsky. I also found Twas the Night Before Halloween, and other Twas books for Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, first day of Kindegarten, etc. by Natasha Wing. And I also bought a couple of other random books about the Pilgrims, Christmas and other things that just seemed so cute. I spend more online time on Amazon than anywhere else—books, movies, and music—my three favorite things on one great website.

People have told me I better hope and pray that Rory is a reader because I’ve been collecting classic books since before she was born. Well, so far, she IS! She’ll sit with books all day if she can. She loves being read to, she loves reading to herself, so far so good. =) And Jake is starting to come around too—the more he sees Rory with books, he seems more interested. Needless to say, we spend a TON of time reading together on the couch. Time will tell if they love their holiday books as much as I did.