Christmas Books for Kids
The good Christmas books hold still for one more read even on December 23rd, when everyone's wound up and bedtime is a suggestion. Expect bells on a train that only believers hear, animals who won't sleep until the fat guy shows up, and enough snow to make you forget you live somewhere warm.
That train ride to the North Pole still feels like the one every other Christmas book gets compared to. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg earns the comparison.
Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn Buehner keeps the same bouncy verse that made bedtime snowmen adventures a hit, just pointed at Christmas Eve.
A sleepy bear's woodland friends rally to keep him awake through the holiday — finding a tree, baking cakes, hanging stockings — until he discovers giving is the best gift of all.
On the day before Christmas, the very first snow falls and children build a snowman who comes to life the moment a magic hat lands on his head.
Every Christmas Eve, hungry trolls knock down Kyri's door and gobble up her family's feast, but this year a boy traveling to Oslo with his pet ice bear might finally put a stop to it.
A gruff, grieving woodcarver known as the valley's best craftsman is asked by a widow and her young son to carve figures for a Christmas creche, setting the stage for an unexpected transformation.
Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer nails the exact agony of waiting for Santa while pretending to help decorate.
Before the song, there was this: a reindeer teased for being different, then needed for exactly that reason. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May is the original.
A poor boy joins the procession of gift-bearers traveling to Bethlehem, and with no treasure to offer the newborn Christ Child, he plays the only gift he has: a song on his drum.
One treetop gets passed from house to house to critter to critter, and Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert E. Barry turns that into a satisfying chain of small gifts.
Thrown, burned, mistaken for a snowman's arm. Stick Man by Julia Donaldson keeps the bounce of the rhyme going right up until Santa steps in.
When every girl at the Paris boarding school falls sick on Christmas Eve, the smallest and bravest one stays well enough to take charge — and finds unexpected help from a magical rug-selling merchant.
Scratch-and-sniff pages mean The Sweet Smell of Christmas by Patricia M. Scarry is one of the only Christmas books your kid can actually smell along with.
A crocodile mistakenly turns up under the tree on Christmas Eve and starts eating everything in sight — the roast, the stove, even the tree — while one girl fights to save him.
Nobody else on this list has a dinosaur exploding presents out the wrong end. The Dinosaur that Pooped Christmas by Tom Fletcher covers the gross-and-giggly gap completely.
