Since I was rummaging around in the Advent box, I grabbed a dozen or so of our favorite Christmas books and brought them upstairs, too. As I looked through them, it was like catching up with dear friends I haven’t seen all year, remembering all over again why I like them so much.

And Jack and Jane are getting old enough now to remember some of the books.

“Ooh, Mama.” Jane holds up The Witness. “Can you read this?”

“Oh!” Jack grabs One Wintry Night. “I love this book! Can we read it? Right now?”

In our house, December is all about candles and books.

You’re on your own finding candles, but I’ve listed the kids’ and my favorite Christmas books in the hope that you’ll find a new book or two to love.

*****

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski, illustrated by P.J. Lynch

One of my favorite Christmas stories, this book brings a glad smile to my face each and every time I read it. P.J. Lynch’s gorgeous illustrations illuminate this story of hope and transformation.

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck, illustrated by Mark Buehner

Every time I read this book, I get teary or choked up or both. My kids don’t get why, but that’s okay; they like the book even if it does make Mama cry. It’s a beautiful story, and I was thrilled when I learned several years ago that it had been made into a picture book. Lovely, all the way around.

One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham, illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson

I’m not sure this is technically a Christmas book, but we’ve read it every year during Advent since Jack was three. The story weaves between a boy lost in an Appalachian blizzard and the whole sweep of the Biblical narrative, from creation to crucifixion. And the illustrations – oh my. They’re simply stunning:

The Witness by Robert Westall, illustrated by Sophy Williams

Okay, so this book takes some liberties with the Nativity story. Purists will be appalled. For the rest of us, though, this lovely book tells the story of Jesus’ birth through the eyes of an Egyptian temple-cat who’s been captured and sold to a Judean shopkeeper. Though it’s long for a picture book, it’s compelling: Jane sat through it, to my utter surprise, when she was just two.

The Story of Christmas, illustrated by Pamela Dalton

The kids and I have read a dozen brand new Christmas books (as in just published in the past month or so) these past few weeks, and this is the only one we’re buying. That’s not to say some of the others weren’t enjoyable, but this one was exquisite.

The text is the Christmas story from the King James Version, which is unparalleled for the beauty of its language. Dalton’s cut-paper-and-watercolor illustrations, which stand out dramatically on black backgrounds, are nearly edible in their deliciousness.

Other Christmas books we enjoy:

The Donkey’s Dream by Barbara Helen Berger. A weary donkey dreams some seriously beautiful and richly symbolic dreams.

The Friendly Beasts, illustrated by Sarah Chamberlain. This is unfortunately out of print, but there’s also a version by Tomie dePaola.

Silent Night, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. The late 1970′s hair on the angels is worth the price of the book. It makes me giggle, but Jane thinks it’s beautiful. To each her own.

Great Joy by Kate diCamillo, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. An organ grinder, his monkey, a little girl, and a Christmas pageant add up to great joy in this sparely written and lushly illustrated book.

One Starry Night by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Jonathan Bean. The rhymed text is fine, but it’s the stylized illustrations that make this book.

Lighthouse Christmas by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. It’s pretty hard to resist the allure of a lighthouse, a one-eared cat, two endearing children, and Carpenter’s pen-and-ink art.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. But of course. How could you have Christmas without the Herdmans?

If you have favorite Christmas books that I’ve not listed here, will you please let me know? I’m always up for a good book! (Or two. Or ten…)

So begins Jacqueline Briggs Martin’s beautiful picture book biography of Wilson Bentley, who devoted his life from boyhood till his death to the study of moisture, particularly of snowflakes.

Born in 1865 in the snowbelt of Vermont, Bentley saw an average of 10 feet of snow each winter, but he never tired of it.

The winter he was 15, he drew a hundred snow crystals, looking at them through a microscope and trying to capture their beautiful shapes on paper before they melted. He discovered that no matter how many snowflakes he looked at, he never saw a replicated design.

You knew that, right? That each snowflake is unique? I knew that, too, learned it in grade school science. But in 1880, no one knew that. Wilson Bentley discovered it, capturing this knowledge one snow crystal at a time through his microscope.

“I found snowflakes that were masterpieces of design,” he wrote. “No one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”

He dedicated his life to trying to preserve those designs. When he was 17, his parents spent their life savings and bought him a microscope-camera. It cost as much his father’s entire herd of cows.

It took Bentley two winters of painstaking experimentation before he discovered how to capture the image of a snowflake on film.

But when he shared his discoveries with his friends and neighbors, no one cared. This was the snowbelt, after all, where snow was “as common as dirt.”

But Bentley persevered. His photographs of snow crystals would be his gift to the world. He just knew it.

As he photographed the crystals, he learned how they formed and why each one was unique.

Over the years, he spent $15,000 on his work – and earned only $4000 from the sale of photographs and slides.

Finally, when he was 66, his book, Snow Crystals, was published. Even today, 80 years later, people who want to learn about snowflakes start by reading Bentley’s book.

I do not know where to begin to sing my praises of this book. The text is lovely, and Mary Azarian’s woodcut-and-watercolor illustrations perfectly capture the beauty and wonder that Bentley feels in his study of snow. (She rightfully won a Caldecott for her work on this book.)

And the story inspires me.

I could write an entire post about Bentley’s perseverance.

Or his patience.

Or his belief in the beauty and treasure of snow in the face of others’ indifference.

Or his love of snow that made him joyfully endure the cold and raw of snowstorms.

But I won’t. I will simply, gently suggest that you get hold of a copy of this book and savor its words, its pictures, its story, and all the lessons it contains.

This is one we will be buying. Wilson Bentley is the kind of person I want my children to know and admire, maybe even emulate.

All quotes in this post are taken from Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, illustrated by Mary Azarian.

The book’s language is rich and complex – and old: lots of words like marry (and merry) and forsooth and threescore and wot and varlet. I get new words for my vocab notebook every time I read this to the kids.

The most fun part is Jack’s narration of our reading afterward (he narrates; I type) in which he says things like, “Fivescore men went looking for Robin Hood,” or “They set the target sevenscore and ten yards away.”

The other week, after we’d read about the shooting-match in Nottingham Town, Jack said that “the beggar shot an arrow, and it smote one of the goose feathers from Gill of the Red Cap’s arrow.” Then he said, “No, no, Mama, delete that. No one would say ‘smote.’ Change it to ‘knocked.’”

I changed it, but I didn’t want to. Call me an insufferable know-it-all, but I love it when he uses words no other eight-year-old in America knows.

Our family read-aloud these days, of course, is The Penderwicks at Point Mouette. Doug, so far, has refrained from making predictions about how it will end. I doubt that will last much longer.

For history, we read Across a Dark and Wild Sea by Don Brown, a picture book biography of St. Columcille, an Irish monk who founded the first monastery in Scotland, on the remote island of Iona. I’ve been there. It was so beautiful, and peaceful – I remember collecting shells in the tidepools along the rocky shore. I want to go back, especially now that I know a little more about its book-loving founder.

We also read several new-to-us picture books that are destined, over time, to become old favorites:

The Midnight Farm by Reeve Lindbergh, illustrated by Susan Jeffers

It’s a bedtime book, a counting book, and an animal book all rolled into one. Lindbergh’s simple couplets, two per double page spread, and Jeffers’s quiet artwork combine to create a soothing before-bed read. I don’t think Luke and Ben, at 15-months, will sit through it yet, but soon.

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco

This is a beautiful story of Polacco’s own family and the quilt that’s been passed down through four generations of women. The drawings are in pencil, except for the keeping quilt, which is always in color.

A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead

I was shocked to read the 2010 copyright on this book. A sweet and slowly unfolding story about a middle-aged zookeeper and his charges, Amos McGee reads like a much older book, and the subdued and quietly humorous illustrations add to the feeling of age – or timelessness. Definitely one for the to-buy list.

Luba and the Wren by Patricia Polacco

A retelling of the tale of “The Fisherman and his Wife,” this story is set in the Ukraine with a wren instead of a fish. Luba is a simple country girl with simple desires whose parents are as greedy as she is gracious.

It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach

I didn’t know when I picked Zemach’s book up at the library that we’d listened to a retelling of this Yiddish fable on our road trip last May. It’s the story of “a poor unfortunate man” who lives with his wife, mother, and six children in a one-room hut.

Oh my, I couldn’t have timed my choosing of this book more perfectly if I’d tried (which I didn’t), as I’d just written my woe-is-me-in-my-small-house post not three days before we read Zemach’s delightfully written and even more delightfully illustrated book.

I think the laugh’s on me.

Books.

Lots and lots and lots of books.

Twice a year the Friends of the Seattle Public Library hold a book sale. Any book that’s been donated to the library in the past six months and any books that the library is pulling out of circulation are on sale for a dollar or two.

I headed straight for the children’s section. Rows of books, spine up, sat on top of large folding tables. Boxes filled with books sat under the tables. As tables and boxes dwindled in content, volunteers consolidated the books – and brought out still more books.

It was a bibliophile’s heaven (also their hell, as there was plenty of twaddle, but let’s not go into that).

I quickly filled the two cloth grocery bags I’d brought and then snagged an empty book box from under the table I was browsing, to hold more books.

After two hours, I’d only managed to make it through the classics, folk and fairy tale, history, and easy reader tables, and my bags were overflowing, the box was overflowing, and my arms were overflowing.

Ooh la la was I having a ball.

But I also had a budget. And there was no way I was going to be able to buy all of the books I’d gathered, no matter how inexpensive they were.

So I dragged my box and my bags over to a corner of the room where sunlight and breeze filtered through a nearby open door, and I sat on the floor, and I sorted.

By the end of another hour, I’d chosen my final books, 34 of them. I got some beauties.

A lovely old copy of Jo’s Boys (which I read as a kid and loved) to go with my mother’s lovely old copy of Little Men that she read when she was a girl and passed on to me.

A handsome edition of The Swiss Family Robinson, illustrated by Lynd Ward, for Jack, who loves the movie. I loved the movie when I was a kid, too. Now – not so much. Since I grew up watching (and reading) the Disney version of pretty much everything, I never read Wyss’s story, but I’m hoping it’s better than Disney’s. We shall see.

I also got a cool old copy of Kidnapped (another Disneyfied tale that I watched as a kid), also illustrated by Lynd Ward, and a beautiful copy of The Secret Garden, illustrated by Inga Moore. I read a borrowed copy of this book to Jack when he was five, and I can hardly wait to share it with Jane.

Then there was a delighfully colorful copy of E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children, which I’ve never read (I told you; I was raised on Disney) but having heard countless recommendations, I’m looking forward to it.

I also picked up hardbound copies of Make Way for Ducklings, which ought to be on every child’s bookshelf and has never been on ours, except when we’ve had it out from the library, and The Gardener, which is one of my favorite picture books ever, right up there with Miss Rumphius.

I could go on (and on and on), but I’ll stop there. Suffice it to say, we’ve got fun reading to do for a month of Sundays.

Life doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.

Avast, me hearties, I forgot, too, till me bonny husband came home from work and told us all over dinner. Arrr!

In honor of the occasion, we regaled one another with our favorite pirate moments of the past year. Scurvy scum, but there weren’t many.

Fun Pirate Moment #1 (overheard)

Jane: Pirates wouldn’t give you sushi!
Jack: They would if they thought you didn’t like it.

Fun Pirate Moment #2 (also overheard)

Jane (asking about the captain of the cargo ship who was rescued from pirates): Did he have a sword?

Doug (laughing): No, he didn’t have a sword.

Jane (confused): I thought all captains had swords.

After recounting of these tales, me friends, we smartly dispatched Uncle Sprague’s homemade ice cream. Arr, ’twas delicious.

Then it was pj’s and tooth-brushing for the kiddos. And then, a moratorium on pirate talk as we embarked on favorite part of the day: stories.

To be specific, the last chapter of The Penderwicks. I have loved reading this book to my kids. They have loved hearing it.

When we read the last page tonight, Jane said, “I liked it, Mama. I really liked it.” She took a deep breath. “I loved it.”

“What’d you think, Jack?” I asked. “And don’t say good.”

“Good,” Jack said. Doug tickled him till he cried uncle.

Then he said, “I liked it.”

“Nice try,” I said. “Jane already used that comment. You have to come up with another one.”

“It was funny,” he said. “I liked Jane and Mr. Penderwick best, because Jane was funny and Mr. Penderwick was funny, too.”

Jane said, “I liked Cagney best. And Rosalind. And Jeffrey. And Churchie. And Jane and Skye and Mr. Penderwick and Batty. And I liked disliking Dexter and Mrs. Tifton.”

Amen, sister. I like disliking them, too. And I echo liking every other character best (though I think I have a special place in my heart for melodramatic writer Jane).

My Jane’s only complaint – and it wasn’t really a complaint, more like a fancy – was that she wished there were pictures. She wanted to see the Penderwicks’ dresses for Jeffrey’s party and to know what Churchie looks like. I told her she could grow up to be a famous children’s book illustrator and then she can pull an Inga Moore and illustrate The Penderwicks herself. She said she didn’t want to wait that long. I can’t say I blame her. So we’re going to circulate a petition to have Ms. Moore create an illustrated version.

In the meantime, may I make a not-so-humble suggestion? If you have a child, especially a girl child, in your life who is seven or eight or nine, you need to read this book to her (or him). And if you can get younger siblings to join in, so much the better. Even without illustrations, this book is pure delight.

*****

Today’s shameless act of self-promotion: my “Morning Prayer–Interrupted” post was featured on FaithVillage yesterday. Woot!

I ask, “So, I’d like to hear what everyone’s favorite part was.”

Tiffany says, “That’s hard. There are so many.”

I say, “Okay, maybe not favorite, but memorable. A scene or image that sticks in your mind.”

Janice says, “At the beginning, when Kit jumps out of the skiff into the water to rescue Prudence’s doll. I can just see her shocked face when she realizes the water is cold.”

I love that scene, too. I’d been pondering it for days. As a writer, I think it’s brilliant, because it does so much:

• it shows the difference between the world Kit’s left behind in Barbados and the one she’s entering in Puritan New England;
• it establishes her character, her naivete and impulsiveness and kindness toward those who are smaller and weaker;
• it reveals Nat’s bravery and kindness and willingness to flout the opinion of others;
• it introduces John as a sympathetic, if timid, soul;
• it causes Goodwife Cruff to hate Kit, and Prudence to adore her
• and it sets in motion many of the book’s later events: Prudence’s adoration leads her to come to the school where Kit is teaching and leave posies on the doorstep, the first in a long chain of events that leads to the book’s climax.

All in one short scene.

Elizabeth George Speare is a master of economy, repeatedly using a single scene or even a single image to many ends.

And her characters are so real, so compelling, and so likeable. Even Goodwife Cruff is sympathetic; in our discussion, Tiffany said Goody Cruff was the character she most pitied because she was so miserable and spiteful and didn’t have to be.

Speare wrote only four novels. I’ve read them all, and they’re all excellent, well-written, well-researched, vivid, compelling, and memorable, which is why two of them (including this one) won Newbery Medals, and one won a Newbery Honor. For these four books, Speare was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for her books’ substantial and lasting contribution to children’s literature.

Whenever I read Speare’s books (and I do, again and again), I take heart. Her children were in high school before she was able to write her first novel, Calico Captive, in her late forties. Then she went on to write her three Newbery books.

So there’s hope for me, for the novels that simmer in the back of my mind. If I could be like Speare and leave a literary legacy of four excellent and enduring books, I’d be exhilarated.  (But first, I probably need to abandon my annoying aptness for alliteration and assonance.)

Fascinating stuff. And all of it new to me.

Looking back on the week, I realized that a lot of the other books we read took place in China. Our neighbor gave us a big stack of books that her boys had outgrown. One of them was The Story About Ping, in which the eponymous duck gets lost on the Yangtze River.

We’ve checked this book out of the library several times, so Jane recognized it when she was pouring over that stack of books and immediately wanted me to read it to her. Which of course I did. She also managed to finagle her reluctant-to-read-aloud brother to read it to her, too.

 
We also read a beautifully illustrated collection of Tang poetry for children; The Lord of the Cranes, which is our new favorite Chinese fairy tale (Jane also likes The Dragon Prince); a book about Chinese character writing (there are three others by the same author, one for each of the four seasons. I look forward to reading them all); and The Five Chinese Brothers, which Jack thought was so funny he insisted that I read it to his dad and godmother, who came over for dinner the night we first read it.

After we’d read all these books, I sat rocking one of the babies to sleep one night, and I realized that we’d just had a China-themed reading week, without my even planning it. So of course, as I left the bedroom, I pulled two books off the shelf that we read a couple years ago: Little Pear and A Grain of Rice, both of which – you guessed it – take place in China.

I love it when my life coalesces like this, with serendipitous connections I hadn’t intended spontaneously emerging. This is just one of the bajillion reasons I love reading to my kids.

Last year, I became reacquainted with them as they tried to keep their widowed father from remarrying.

And while I was on our family trip this month, the Penderwicks went to Maine.

When I got home and realized I’d missed the release of their most recent adventures, I ordered a copy. It arrived Wednesday. I read almost half of it that night. Unfortunately, since then I’ve only had time to read another fifteen pages or so.

Even as I sit here typing, the book is lying beside me on the sofa. Its soft yellow cover with the light blue silhouettes keeps drawing my eyes, and I keep wondering what is going to happen to Skye and Jane and Batty and Jeffrey.

“The girls had never been apart for an entire two weeks, and though all of them were nervous about it, the one going off on her own was the most nervous. This was the oldest, thirteen-year-old Rosalind, and she was having a terrible time accepting that her sisters could survive without her.”

So begins the book. After Rosalind leaves for New Jersey with her best friend, Aunt Claire takes the other sisters to Maine where they stay near the ocean in a little cabin called Birches.

The first day there, Skye gets a thorough wetting in the ocean and loses her precious How To Take Care of Batty list.

The second day, Aunt Claire sprains her ankle and has to go to the hospital, leaving Skye in charge, and Skye does not want to be in charge.

The third day, Jane falls onto the rocks and busts her nose.

I’ve just begun day four, and I wonder what will happen next. There’s a kid named Dominic. I want to know if he’s all “hair and attitude” like Skye thinks he is or if he’s the real life prince that Jane thinks he is. There’s his little sister Mercedes, who seems sweet, if a bit awkward. Then there’s Alec, the next door neighbor; I think I know how he fits in (but I won’t blurt my suspicions here). And the Penderwicks and I just met a bald guy named Turron (again, I have my suspicions).

If you’ve not yet made the acquaintance of the Penderwicks, do yourself a favor: Get hold of a copy of the first book and read it. If you’re not hooked, well, you probably don’t like fiction, and I have absolutely nothing to say to you.

Meanwhile, Skye and Jane and Batty are beckoning me to summer and Maine. I’m going to head there just as soon as I finish this post.

Which is right about…now.

It’s one of the few things I think I’m pretty dang good at as a mom: I feed them wholesome food for their minds, their spirits, their souls.

Here are a few of the delicious meals I’ve served up for Jack and Jane these past weeks:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I grew up watching the movie; this was my first time reading the book. I liked it much better.

Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. Jane called it “Homeward Price.” I wasn’t about to correct her.

Tippy Lemmey by Patricia McKissack; illustrated by Susan Keeter. This has been on several book lists, so we finally checked it out. It’s a great early chapter book.

Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop; illustrated by Peter Hansen. We’ve checked this one out from the library way too many times. I think I just need to buy it.

More Stories from Grandma’s Attic by Arleta Richardson. Jane and I giggled and giggled over the bonnet-wearing piglet in the buggy. Too funny.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. Jack says this is his favorite book ever. He, Jane, and their cousin have been practicing their levitation spells every day since we got to my parents’ house.

The Empty Pot by Demi. A lovely story. Beautiful illustrations.

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden; illustrated by Garth Williams. Who knew a story about a cricket could be so engaging?

Poetry Speaks to Children, edited by Elise Paschen. I’ve always admired poetry from afar but have been too intimidated by it to make more than a cautious acquaintance. With a wide range of poems and whimsical illustrations, this book takes away the poetry fear factor. It also comes with a CD, so you can hear many of the poets read their poetry. Fun times!

I’m always on the lookout for new books to discover and love, so please dish: what’s a great book you’ve read with your kid(s) recently?