holiday traditions

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Holiday Books for Late Elementary-Age Kids and Tweens

For the past few years, I’ve been downloading the free reading calendars from Everyday Reading. I follow Janssen’s directions for printing a large “blueprint” size via Staples, and print one out each summer and each December and hang it on my kitchen wall.

At this point, I think I am doing it mainly for me rather than for Carla… but… at least right now that’s okay. 

(All About Me Aside: While I definitely encourage holiday reading each year to increase the magic quotient for Carla, I also do it for me. Last year, for the first time ever, I tried to read some adult Christmas books. I made a list based on recommendations from people I trust and adore… and then my experiment was a huge flop. I am not going to list them here because a) I’m pretty sure I mentioned them before, even though I can’t find it and b) I know all too sharply the feeling of betrayal and failure that accompanies recommending a book and having a friend/family member dislike/dismiss it. In this case, not liking these much-loved books made ME feel like the failure, I can assure you. Anyway. I want to try again this year, but I am recalibrating slightly by trying to find books that Carla and I can enjoy together.) 

Anyway: I am contemplating the December reading calendar and realizing that we may have finally outgrown our holiday book collection.

It’s not like I’m throwing them away or anything. I love our classic selection that includes things like Bear Stays Up for Christmas and Latke the Lucky Dog and beautifully illustrated versions of books like Oskar and the Eight Blessings and The Night Before Christmas. (I try, I really do, to inject some sort of religious element into this season, so we do talk about the story of Jesus’s birth and we discuss the miracle of the oil. We have a few books that lean more toward the religious, like Room for a Little One and Maccabee! The Story of Hanukkah, but most of our books are more secular in nature.)

All images below from amazon except where noted.

(Another Mainly About Me Aside: Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday, but since it overlaps with the Christmas season, I like to give it some prominence in our winter celebrations mainly to feel like we aren’t implying that one side of Carla’s heritage is more important than the other. This may matter to no one but me, but I am just making it up as I go along here.)

Onto the Book Search!

A few years ago I ordered one of my favorite Christmas chapter books – The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson – and read it to Carla. I don’t think she really enjoyed it as much as I did (although perhaps it will be more resonant this year). But what I want is more books like that. Good stories that evoke the spirit of the season and warm the heart. I don’t care if they are religious or secular, about Hanukkah or Christmas or any of the winter holidays we don’t personally celebrate but would be interested in exploring. My only stipulation is that I am trying to veer away from picture books this year. We have plenty, and I don’t know if they will appeal to my nine-and-a-half-year-old anymore. (Sob.)

During my search, it seems to me that there is quite a dearth of this very specific kind of books for Carla’s age range. But we shall persevere.

I got, as gifts, two books that might work: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens and A Little House Christmas Treasury by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I started reading the latter to Carla last year and I think it might be the right kind of thing. 

image from bookdepository.com

There is a collection by Louisa May Alcott I may need to own: Christmas Stories: 32 Classic Stories & Poems for the Young & Old.

Carla and I are going to see one of her friends in a performance of The Nutcracker. Maybe we should see if our library has a copy of Nutcracked by Susan Adrian to get in the proper frame of mind? (I personally think the entire Nutcrackerstory is… how can I put this tactfully… I can’t think of a way; suffice it to say that it doesn’t resonate with me particularly well but I do enjoy the music.) 

Matt Haig’s A Boy Called Christmas seems to pop up on “best Christmas books for tweens” lists. But I don’t know if it would appeal to Carla. On the other hand, if she does like it, there are two others in the series we could read. I’m adding it to the library holds list.

Carla is LOVING James Patterson’s Katt and Dogg books, so obviously Dog Diaries: Happy Howlidays: A Middle School Story is on the list.

I initially passed over this book because it strikes me as ridiculous, but… it gets good ratings and Carla does really love dinosaurs. So I am putting a hold on The Christmasaurus by Tom Fletcher as well. 

I completely forgot that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was a holiday book! I think I may have it knocking around in a dusty bookcase somewhere along with the rest of the series.

The Naughty List by Michael Fry (NOT to be confused with On the Naughty List, which looks like quite the steamy Christmas anthology) looks cute… although I am already growing weary of the “child travels to North Pole to correct a mistake, hijinks ensue” story line.

Reluctantly, I have ordered The Christmas Pig from the library (reluctant because I continue to feel morally uncomfortable about supporting the author). 

Perhaps The Last Holiday Concert would be a good one; I love Andrew Clements. 

How about a nice holiday mystery story? Pinky Bloom and the Case of the Magical Menorah by Judy Press looks very cute.

Oooh! A Nancy Drew Christmas by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene sounds right up my alley. Not quite sure if Carla would enjoy it – she’s not as obsessed with mysteries as I am. But this story features a ski resort in one of our favorite states, so maybe that would win her over! Putting that one on hold for sure.

Along similar appeals-to-me-but-perhaps-not-to-Carla lines is The Very Merry Murder Club collection of “wintery crime and mystery stories.” Alas, it is not available at my library.

Would The Girl Who Ruined Christmas by Cindy Callaghan be a good option, I wonder? I could see Carla being turned off by the title… or possibly intrigued. And… is it too tween-y?

I like the sound of Father Christmas’s Fake Beard by Terry Pratchett – a collection of humorous stories.

Or maybe one of the Enid Blyton collections? Christmas Tales or Christmas Stories. And don’t they look like they are illustrated by Quentin Blake? (Amazon doesn’t say and I didn’t do any additional digging.)

As long as we are looking at short stories, I am going to add The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah by Isaac Bashevis Singer to the list. It’s kind of old (published in 1980, before I was born!), and may be for a slightly more mature audience (amazon confusingly lists it as having a “reading age” of 4 years and up and a “grade level” of 7 through 9), but if I can find it, it could be worth a try. (Alas, our library does not have it. Perhaps I can find a good used copy from amazon or ThriftBooks. I remember with great fondness Singer’s short story collection When Shlemiel Went to Warsawbut that one isn’t available either.

This collection of stories about the winter solstice – Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice – sounds really interesting. I love learning how people in countries other than mine celebrate winter.

Although it is yet another of the “child travels to the North Pole” genre, North Pole Patrol by J. C. Deelstra sounds like it has potential.

Okay, I know I said no picture books, but this illustrated version of O. Henry’s classic The Gift of the Magi looks stunning… and that’s a story I haven’t shared with Carla yet.

Eve Bunting’s One Candle also looks beautiful and the story sounds heartfelt.

Nostalgia for The Baby-Sitters Club books made me look twice at Ann M. Martin’s On Christmas Eve, but it sounds very heartwarming!

On an entirely different tone, Krampus and the Thief of Christmas by Eldritch Black sounds different and potentially interesting. Although I can’t tell if it is truly scary or not. Carla is not a huge fan of scary.

What am I missing? What are the Christmas/winter/winter holiday books you (and/or your kids) read every year? 

I have requested 8 books for Carla (and, honestly, for me) from the library and I have three books in my amazon cart. I also requested two Agatha Christies for myself: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery, in the hopes that choosing books by an author I know and love will result in a higher Christmas-book enjoyment rate than I had last year. 

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

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Are We Doing Holiday Cards This Year?

Photo from minted.com

Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just sitting here at my computer, scrolling through holiday card templates and weeping. While there are still lots of the standard designs, some of the messaging has shifted to address the very significant year we’ve been having. Some are humorous, referencing Zoom meetings or qauarnteams or that “everything is fine” dog-sitting-cheerfully-amid-the-flames meme. But the more prevalent feeling is poignancy, I think. I am seeing a lot of messages embracing togetherness, a lot of very simple cards (just the name of the sender, or a moderate “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings”), a lot of messages about gratitude or thankfulness or hope. The one that made the tearfulness slip over into sobbing was one that said in bold, reassuring letters: Love is all around us. Oh jeez, and after I wrote this whole post and had calmed down and was looking for a photo to put at the top, I came across one that said: You are essential to us always. And I lost it again.

It seems fair and reasonable and maybe necessary that the messaging of this year’s holiday greetings would be different: gentler, more hopeful, more restrained. Yet I have such a complicated mix of feelings in response: tenderness, toward the designers who have so carefully crafted these messages of love and solidarity, and toward the people who choose them. Petulant anger that we need to have specialized messaging at all. Sadness that we can’t be with our loved ones this year, and grief for those whose loved ones have been lost forever. Resignation that even though this strange mostly-awful year is coming to a close, things aren’t BETTER yet. Determination to celebrate and be joyful nonetheless.

My husband, who does not particularly like the holiday card tradition in normal years, is even more against them than usual. On the other hand, I feel like maybe they are more crucial now than ever. My mother says they are not just the yearly hello from friends and loved ones, near and distant – now, they are an important touchpoint. We’re not just wishing one another happy holidays, we are saying, “We are alive, we have so far made it through, if not unscathed at least with enough left over to send out a seasonal card.” For me, sending holiday cards (and receiving them!!!!) has always been one of my favorite traditions of the season. And I am CLINGING to normalcy and tradition here, to help me power through the last few months of what is, dear lord in heaven please make it so, a very unusual and upsetting outlier of a year.

Of course, I completely understand the opposite feeling. That this year was so rough that it’s hard to know how to acknowledge it. That it may feel almost off-puttingly cheerful to send out a message about the holidays when these holidays are so full of unaccustomed stress and uncertainty. That we are all doing everything we can just to make it to 2021, and trying to send out holiday cards is just another expenditure of time and money and energy that we don’t necessarily have. 

So I get it. This may not be the year for holiday cards for many people, and that makes total sense. But I’ve come down on the side of wanting to do them. For me, it’s an important point of connection. And in a year where so many of those connections have been severed, I crave it more than ever. I haven’t yet persuaded my husband to my way of thinking. (He is the photographer, so I kind of need his buy-in.) But I am working on it.

What are you doing, cards-wise, this year? And, whatever it is, is it a break with tradition? And, if you are sending out cards, what kind of messaging are you considering?