The Best Read-Aloud Christmas Stories for Children

I retired in May, and I loved being a school librarian. There are lots of things I miss.

One of the things I miss most about being a school librarian is this time of the year when I shared my favorite Christmas stories with children. I'm a researcher by nature, and I carefully polled people and researched books other librarians and teachers loved to read aloud to children. Then I found out for myself what works best: I read aloud stories. 

I won't be singing Christmas songs, or dressing up for Polar Express Day, or sharing my favorite Christmas read-alouds with children this year, but I can share some of my favorite read-aloud stories with you.


FUNNY STORIES ABOUT SANTA AND REINDEER AND CHRISTMAS TREES AND OTHER CHRISTMAS-Y THINGS

          

Mrs. Claus Takes a Vacation

Auntie Claus

Santa's Crash-Bang Christmas

How Santa Really Works

I See Santa Everywhere

Santa's Book of Names

Olive, the Other Reindeer

Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree

STORIES WITH BELOVED BOOK CHARACTERS

Just about every beloved children's book character has his or her own Christmas book. Clifford. Arthur. Froggy. Fancy Nancy. Bear. Minerva Louise. They all have their own books. Take a look.

         

Clifford's Christmas

Bear Stays Up

Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear

A Christmas for Bear

The Peterkins' Christmas

Minerva Louise on Christmas Eve

NEW VERSIONS OF OLD STORIES

    

The Teachers' Night Before Christmas

A Pirate's Night Before Christmas

The Soldiers' Night Before Christmas

Texas Night Before Christmas

A Cajun Night Before Christmas

The Twelve Days of Christmas Dogs

Pete the Cat's Twelve Groovy Days of Christmas

Twelve Days of Christmas in Texas

CHRISTMAS MUST-READS 

       

The All-I'll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll

Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree

Yoon and the Christmas Mitten

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree

The Polar Express

The Little Match Girl

The Steadfast Tin Soldier

A Christmas Carol

A Child's Christmas in Wales

A Christmas Memory

The Night Before Christmas

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

What have I forgotten?

I've created a Best Read-Aloud Christmas Stories for Children list at Goodreads. I'd love to have you add your favorites to the list and vote.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

How Can I Be So Crazy-Busy? I'm Retired!

If your vision of retirement is Lazy Days Sitting Around Reading, I urge you to reconsider turning in your paperwork. My dad warned me, but I didn't believe him. "You'll be busier than you ever were working," he cautioned. "And, worst of all, there are no vacation days."

He is right. November was a blur of NaNoWriMo, Nonfiction November, our Master Naturalist project, and Cybils. What did I accomplish?


NaNoWriMo

I am still amazed. I've done NaNoWriMo every year for the past eleven years and I've never written diddy-squat. This year, I made my goal of 50,000 words before mid-month. 

How did this happen? I retired, of course, and that enabled me to write more. I have to thank Saundra at Wildly Imperfect. I joined her group in January. Her group encourages people to write (or do some other practice) each day and post about it. I quickly got into the habit of writing a little each day. I also must thank Joy at Joy's Book Blog. She created a lovely guidebook to help people complete projects, and she formed a group that provided much support for NaNoWriMo. Thank you, Joy!

Nonfiction November

I went wild with Nonfiction November this year. I looked over my nonfiction reading for the year. I paired nature-themed nonfiction with fiction. I shared my list of the best books for writers about writing. I shared my thoughts on nonfiction-that-reads-like-fiction. I compiled a huge list of nonfiction I want to read that I found on other blogs. I wish I could do Nonfiction November every month.

Nonfiction November: My Year in Nonfiction

Nonfiction November: Nonfiction / Fiction Book Pairing

Nonfiction November Be the Expert: My List of the Best Books for Writers About Writing

Nonfiction November: Reads Like Fiction

Nonfiction November: New to My TBR

The Cybils

For the past eleven years, I've spent every October, November, and December reading huge amounts of children's books. I always try to read every nominated book, but this year I decided to really push things and set a goal of trying to review all the books I enjoyed. 

This year, I read 300 books out of 308 nominated (so far...I still hope to read them all.) I wrote reviews of 190 books. That certainly didn't hurt my yearly totals; I have read more than 400 books this year at Goodreads.

Now my panel of judges is hard at work trying to whittle the list down to seven books each for fiction picture books and board books.


My December Plans

What are my book-ish plans for the end of the year?
          * Finish all the Cybils---8 to go!
          * Cybils Short Lists
          * My Best-of-2018 List
          * Finish up a couple more books this year
          * Take a serious bite out of Anna Karenina
       

Was your November as crazy as mine?

Did you do NaNoWriMo or Nonfiction November?

What are you working on this month? 

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've
wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound
 journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens
at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their
own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly,
mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!
This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read”
book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted at The Book Date.

A Baking Frenzy

I blame it on The Great British Baking Show. It's your fault, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry.

You may know that I tend to become...uh-hem...obsessed about certain things. 

What am I obsessed with now? Baking.

I don't watch tv. I stopped watching tv casually in 2003. It's the best thing I ever did. It frees up huge amounts of time that I can spend doing things I love, like reading and writing and drawing. And, now, baking.

Instead of randomly turning on the set and flipping through channels, I periodically ask for suggestions for good tv, set the DVR, and watch a sample show. 

One of those suggestions was The Great British Baking Show. I watched one show and fell in love. I've watched all of Season 1 (American, as shown on our PBS), and I've just started Season 2. 

I've borrowed one of Mary Berry's cookbooks from the library and I've bought Paul Hollywood's book and a book from the show to keep.

And I'm baking. And baking. And baking.

Here's some of what I've been baking lately.

We have picked up thousands of pecans this year, so I just had to try the Maximum Pecan Pie I read about in the Houston Chronicle just before Thanksgiving. Even the crust has pecans in it.

I also made a Tart Lemon Pie from the New York Times at Thanksgiving. The crust came out a little wonky; I couldn't find any beans to allow me to successfully blind bake the crust. I won't do that again. In any case, it tasted better than it looked.

I used Mary Berry's Quick Puff Pastry dough to make up some savory pastries with ham (leftover from Thanksgiving) and cheese fillings, post-Thanksgiving.

Today I whipped up some tiny quiches and small empanadas for my niece's baby shower. I've made quiches and empanadas since I was a young married person. It's so tricky for me to work with these buttery doughs in our Texas heat.

 

I've always been obsessed with biscuits and rolls and bread. My mom made amazing dinner rolls and my Grandma Ashley made fabulous biscuits. I loved this recipe for flaky biscuits that I discovered at the beginning of this year. And I will always be indebted to Emma Cazabonne of Words and Peace, who I met in person at BookExpo in Chicago, for the bread recipe she gave me.

Are you a baker? 

What kinds of baking do you like best?

What are baking cookbooks you like?

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

My Favorite Reading Season: Winter

It's winter here along the Texas Gulf Coast. It's seventy degrees Fahrenheit with brilliant sunshine and a snap of chill in the air. 

It's perfect reading weather.

In winter, I become much like our sisters, the bears. I hibernate. The YMCA Pool is open, but it's too cold for me to swim. It's too chilly most of the time to ride my bike. I walk, but often our walks are abbreviated because of the cold. 

Instead, I read. I pull out my favorites from my huge stack of TBRs and I jump in.

Here are books I have lined up for this winter. I tend to read big books in the winter.

I've got Anna Karenina, of course. It's 864 pages. 

My other chunkster, The Silk Roads, weighs in at 657 pages.

I've got several books about baking lined up.

I've got several books-about-books lined up. These were gifted to me in November from my wonderful birthday book club.

And a huge, wonderful travel book to dream about over winter.

 What are your reading plans for winter?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

I Read Anna Karenina

To be clear, that is "read," present tense, not "read," past tense. I have just begun to read Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is said by many to be the best novel ever written.

I have an ebook of Anna Karenina and I have the same version as a real paperback. My copy of Anna Karenina has 864 pages and I am on page 30. I've already met ten characters, and the Russian names are beginning to tumble and jumble together in my mind.

I can see that reading Anna Karenina is going to be an event.

Why, you may be asking, are you reading Anna Karenina at this most busy time of the year?

The simple answer is that Anna Karenina was my draw for the Classics Club Spin. (You do, of course, know about the Classics Club, right? If you do not, check here for more information, and sign up with your fifty classics today...time's a-wasting.) This spin is unique for Classics Club Spins; we have been given two months---the entire months of December and January---to read a book on our list. We were encouraged to pick our longer books. I stacked the deck and offered up my five longest books to the spin gods and Anna Karenina is what I drew.

How is it going? you may be wondering. The short answer is: slowly. I expected that, of course. I'm good at setting a pace, though, and I've already figured out that I can make it to the end if I average just fifteen pages a day.

I will read Anna Karenina by January 31st. I will.




Have any of you read Anna Karenina? Do you have any pointers for me with this very-long novel? Any helps out there?

What did you draw for the Classics Club Spin? How do you feel about your Spin pick?

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've
wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound
 journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens
at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their
own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly,
mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!
This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read”
book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted at The Book Date.