With Christmas around the corner now, I can’t let any more time go by without sharing one of my favorite holiday posts of the year – the kids’ Advent book haul.  Adding a few books to our Christmas library has become a beloved holiday tradition in my house.  (Show of hands: who is surprised that book-buying is a holiday tradition around here?  Nobody?)  When I was growing up, we had a stack of books that my mom would pull out for the holidays and I looked forward all year long to the Christmas books reappearing.  (My favorite, The Littlest Angel, was also my first experience of book-induced sobbing.)  Naturally, I have made sure that my kids have a robust Christmas library of their own.  When Peanut was a baby, the Christmas books appeared on my doorstep in veritable floods.  Once I felt that we had the basics down, I slowed the acquisition action and for the past couple of years have been adding three books to the library each December: one for our family library, one for Peanut, and one for Nugget.  Want to see what we’ve added this year?

For the family library, I picked up The Twelve Days of Christmas in Virginia, by Sue Corbett.  I first became aware of the series when I spotted the charming The Twelve Days of Christmas in New England and added it to Nugget’s Amazon wish list – but when I realized that there was a series covering pretty much every state, there was no question which state had to be the first on our list.  Perhaps in future years, I’ll pick up the states that we visit on our travels through the year (I considered grabbing the California and Florida books this year, but decided not to) – but we had to take care of our home, first.

Peanut’s book is another one that I have had my eye on for years, but – full disclosure – we haven’t read it yet, although we’ve had it for a few weeks.  The illustrations are gorgeous and I have high hopes for anything written by Rumer Godden, but… it’s really long.  Nugget doesn’t have the patience to sit and listen to such a lengthy book (he’s got a great attention span, but – guys, I’m not kidding when I say this book is REALLY long) and Peanut’s longer evening storytimes are currently dedicated to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  We’ll get around to it.  Keepin’ it real.

Nugget’s Advent book, by contrast, we have read MANY times already.  The kid is a gigantic Richard Scarry fanboy and there was no question that we were going to have to have The Night Before The Night Before Christmas for our Advent library this year.  It’s funny, silly and charming – everything you’d expect of a Richard Scarry book.  My only complaint is that Lowly Worm is completely absent from the story!  THE PEOPLE WANT LOWLY.

So, there you have it!  I love the tradition of adding a few books to our Christmas library each year, and I spend months trying to decide which we should acquire next.  I hope the kids continue this tradition on to adulthood – both for their own children, and for themselves.  Thanks to kindle deals (which I don’t count toward Project 24, sorry if that’s cheating) I kept the tradition going for myself, too – hello Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Christmas in High Rising!

What’s your favorite holiday read?