The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter
Once I started seeing this book everywhere, I knew I needed to give it a try. I was surprised to see it was classified as romance at the library, considering the title and book summary. Once I read it, I got a bit of the romance aspect, but it was pretty light and behind closed doors. It made me think of what an Emily Henry cozy mystery might be.
I really enjoyed the writing and the brief interludes of the police transcript. Randomly jumping to Ethan’s POV halfway through, and then sporadically after that, kind of threw me off. I feel like he would mention things and the reader would get them, then he’d mention them again later to Maggie and, while I understand why it was that way, it just felt repetitive as a reader and I would have rather had new reveals instead of reliving the elevator scene several times. However, I loved this overall and want to read more by the author.
I read the first four books in this series in the fall and had to wait for this one to be released. I got it for Christmas but just read it in February due to my never-ending TBR and library checkouts.
It was good timing because I needed a cozy escape from reality, though, and this did the trick! I think this book progressed the side storyline of Carly and Ari nicely and it felt like that story was happening organically. Too often the romantic storylines of cozy mysteries either feel forced or rushed. While Carly and Ari are pretty innocent overall, I buy the sweetness and their relationship journey overall. I hope the series continues so we get to see their wedding, which should be happening soon!
I also love how the other characters are becoming more dimensional, for he most part. I loved getting to see more of Carly's sister, Norah. I also loved the development of Nina, and hope to see more from her. Suzanne seemed a bit pulled back this book, and I wonder if she's going to go away in the next, or if something's going on in her life she didn't really address... (Yes, I know it's fiction, but c'mon, I'm invested!) It was interesting to have some new players in this mystery, but I have to say I loved Grant coming back for the holidays. I'd read a side series starring him, even if it focused on food and music instead of mystery.
Overall, I think this was a great fifth book in the series. It was cozy, moved the overarching story along, and made me want to read more. I've recommended this series to a lot of people who seem to enjoy it as well, so give it a try!
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
The Herdman siblings—infamously known as the "worst kids in the world"—have hijacked the annual Christmas pageant, leaving the whole town bracing for disaster.
Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys are notorious for their antics: they’ve burned down Fred Shoemaker’s toolshed, blackmailed Wanda Pierce out of her charm bracelet, and whacked Alice Wendelken upside the head. So when they crash church for the free snacks and take over the Christmas pageant, everyone assumes chaos is inevitable.
But as the Herdmans, who have never heard the Christmas story before, begin to reimagine it in their own unconventional way, something unexpected happens. This year’s pageant turns out to be unlike anything anyone expected—and maybe that’s what makes it unforgettable.
I remember reading this as a kid and have been re-reading some childhood books trying to find this scene I remember (I’ve already Googled and Reddited so it’s driving me nuts). I didn’t know this had been made into a movie but now I really want to see it. The book was better than I remembered - it never stood out to me in my memory, but I really enjoyed it this time.
The Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson
At Woodrow Wilson Elementary, whenever trouble brews, you can bet a Herdman is involved. These kids aren’t just notorious; they’re practically outlaws. They smoke cigars, tell lies, and start fires—and that’s on the rare days they actually show up to school.
But when a school project challenges everyone to find something nice to say about their classmates—even the Herdmans—students begin to wonder: could there be more to this wild and unruly family than meets the eye?
I liked this even better than the Christmas Pageant because the reader really gets to know the Herdman family and it’s got a great ending. It felt really realistic and reminded me a lot of my elementary school years.
My Brother Louis Measures Worms: And Other Louis Stories by Barbara Robinson
Eight-year-old Louis has somehow been driving his mom's car around town, the family cat has gone missing to have her kittens, and a free wedding has sparked plenty of excitement. With costume parades, mysterious paint allergies, and chaotic bicycle mishaps, life with the Lawson family is always full of surprises!
I read this right after two Herdman books and kept confusing the main character and her brother in each book, but all the family stories were really funny. I wish the third book in this collection was the third Herdman book, The Best Halloween Ever, just to keep them all together and prevent the character confusion.
If you saw a bearded dinosaur wearing a red suit on Christmas Eve, wouldn’t you think it was Santa? He even has eight tiny dinos pulling his sleigh…but they’re not really putting out gifts like Santa would. In fact, they’re making a mess!
This book uses cute photos of mischievous toy dinosaurs to tell a story of a wild Christmas Eve! If your kid loves dinosaurs and Christmas like mine, they’ll enjoy this story.
There’s an added bonus for older readers: since the illustrations are photos of toys, it’s something they can recreate themselves! My kid loves making videos and taking pictures so I have a feeling we’ll be staging some photos similar to those in this book over winter break. This would be a really fun jumping-off point for a STEM or MakerSpace lesson, and could even progress to stop motion videos!
This is such a fun story about what happens when Santa starts doubting that a child is real. He thinks the Mom writes the letter to him, and the dad puts out the cookies. Sure, Harold sat on Santa's lap last year, but that kid didn't even look like the Harold Santa remembers!
At the same time, Harold isn't sure he believes in Santa anymore, He decides to hide on Christmas Eve to catch Santa in the act of leaving presents. Santa decides that he will also hide in Harold's living room, to see if Harold runs out on Christmas morning, excited to open his presents. While both of these sound like good plans, something is bound to go wrong...
This book is fun for children of all ages - and the adults reading it aloud! It's a nice twist on a Santa story, very humorous, and Atkinson's illustrations are amazing as always.
We've had this book for a few years, so I'm surprised I haven't featured it before. As someone who isn't the biggest fan of Christmas music (several radio stations here start playing it 24/7 before Thanksgiving), having a fresh, silly twist on a classic is a delight to read aloud - and then get stuck in your head!
This is a tech-y, robotic take on the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring a Robo-Santa giving, among other things, a cartridge in a gear tree. The words fit perfectly to the original tune, and the detailed illustrations give you and your kid a lot to look at on each page. I can't recommend this one enough if you're looking for a fun, silly spoof of a Christmas book.
I'm biased since he's one of my favorites, but nothing beats Dan Santat's illustrations. Here, his work is perfectly paired with a whimsical story by Betsy Bird about Freddy, who is Santa's biggest fan. Freddy has all the Santa merchandise and Christmas paraphernalia you could think of, but he's desperate for a selfie with the man himself. He hatches a devious plot and draws up plans to delay Santa and make sure he gets a picture.
This story is so silly to read aloud, and as I said, I always love Santat's illustrations. I can't wait to read more picture books by Bird.
As a former public librarian and current school librarian, I'm pretty thoughtful about what holiday books I read to children. I don't want to highlight one holiday and ignore another, so a careful balance is necessary. This book should definitely be added in to any rotation of winter holiday stories, because whether the listeners celebrate Christmas or not, they can enjoy the details of Freddy's Santa-catching plan and relate to loving a famous figure so much, you'll do anything to meet them!
Thanks to the @kidlitexchange network and Flyaway Books for the review copy of this book - all opinions are my own. The Worst Christmas Ever, by Kathleen Long Bostrom and illustrated by Guy Porfirio released September 17th, which gives you time to get your own copy before Christmas!
Matthew's family moves to California in the fall, and as they're getting ready for Christmas, Matthew is sad that there's not much changing of the seasons in their new state. The family gets a Christmas tree and volunteers to be in their church's nativity scene to feel the holiday spirit. Then Jasper, Matthew's beloved dog, goes missing! Matthew is upset about being in a new place that doesn't feel like home OR Christmas, and now he has to hope for a miracle to find his dog again.
This is a lot of story packed into a gorgeous picture book! Even though it's still hot and humid outside with Christmas several months away, my son loved reading this book and asked for it several nights in a row. It's not overly holiday-themed, so don't worry about reading it too early in the year and getting tired of it - this is one you won't mind reading over and over!
This year I had it together enough to do the 12 Days of Christmas Storytime with my son. Our bedtime routine lately has been a little rushed, as we get home late from after-school activities or have errands to run, so it's been a race to get dinner, bathe and brush teeth, and get to bed at a reasonable time before we have to start all over again. Sometimes I'd be too tired to wait for my son to pick a book and read it to him, and often it was the same one we'd just read a million times. I know that everyone has favorites, and re-reading books with kids is only good for them, but... I mean, I was really tired, ok? Mom-shame all you want, but some days, there was no way a bedtime story was happening, no matter how much he wanted it. And I'm sure you can imagine how much it hurt my librarian-mom heart to say no, but for sanity's sake, I'd have to.
12 Days of Christmas Storytime helped us make sure we prioritized reading together. My son loved opening a new book every day. The best part is - they weren't all new! Many were bought heavily discounted when our local bookstore closed last year, and I had tucked them away so I wouldn't give my son a ton of new books at once. Others were bought at our school's book fair. Others were bought from a used bookstore or from the library's discard cart. There's no need to break the bank if you want to do this with your kids! It's definitely possible to keep it affordable. I used a patchwork of leftover wrapping paper scraps, so I didn't have to buy or use new resources for that, either. Some were even wrapped in brown kraft paper, or a layer of tissue paper! My son is young enough to not care about presentation (if he ever will?) as much as the opening part!
All of these books were new to us, so they were fun to read. We went to bed knowing what book we were going to read, and my son did his necessary tasks a little bit faster knowing he had a new story to read. (He is usually the king of dawdling, so this kick in the pants was nice.)
I'm definitely going to start stockpiling books to do this again next year! I might even keep an extra stash of new-to-us books to use as incentives when it seems like we're not going to get a bedtime story that night. I think it will inspire both of us to get our chores out of the way and get ready for bed!
Last week I posted a booktube video of three favorite Christmas books we'd been reading.
Then this week, several books I had on hold came in, so we had a new stack of Christmas books to read! Since Christmas is the season of giving, I wanted to share more of our favorites.
The Last Christmas Tree is a cute book about a scrawny tree that is constantly overlooked in favor of bigger trees. It's still in the lot on Christmas Eve, all alone...only a Christmas miracle can help the tree find a home. The illustrations in this book are gorgeous and colorful, and the story is one that we will re-read each year.
Dinosaur vs. Santa is a fun book because my stepson loves dinosaurs, and we love the character from the other Dinosaur vs. books. The text in this book is simple, which leaves the bright, bold illustrations to tell a lot of the story. It's fun for kids to see what Dinosaur does in each picture to help move the story along.
The Gingerbread Pirates is about a boy and his mother who are making cookies for Santa. They make gingerbread men, but decide to decorate them as pirates - including a toothpick as a peg leg! After the boy goes to sleep, the gingerbread men come to life and try to avoid being eaten by Santa. The cookie illustrations in this book are really cute, and the story is sweet - no pun intended! I especially like this book because I reviewed another pirate Christmas book in my video: A Pirate's Night Before Christmas.
Little Robin's Christmas is another book we'll be reading each year. The animals are adorable, especially round Little Robin, who has seven sweater vests to wear the week before Christmas. When Little Robin goes out, he finds animals that seem to need a vest more than he does, so he keeps giving them away. The ending is really sweet and helps remind children that this is the season of giving, and that it's important to be kind.
I hope you enjoy reading these Christmas books as much as we have. Merry Christmas!
Read them for yourself!
Krensky, Stephen. The Last Christmas Tree. Illus. Pascal Campion. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2014. Print.
Shea, Bob. Dinosaur vs. Santa. New York: Disney Hyperion Books, 2012. Print.
Kladstrup, Kristin. The Gingerbread Pirates. Illus. Matt Tavares. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2009. Print.
Fearnley, Jan. Little Robin's Christmas. Waukesha, WI: Little Tiger Press, 1998. Print.
Today was the Christmas storytime for two classes from SRVS! I read Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry and Olive, the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Semibold and Vivian Walsh.
Mr. Willowy's Christmas Tree is a cute rhyming story about a too-tall tree that keeps getting trimmed down. The craft tied in with that book - we made Christmas ornaments to hang on our trees at home!
Clockwise from top left: Hard at work // The whole world // LaQuita's signature style is brightly colored stripes // I love how this one looks like a Christmas tree with a huge heart beside it!
We ended the session by reading Olive, the Other Reindeer. This is a really fun book about Olive, a puppy who is convinced she's a reindeer because the words to the famous Christmas carol tell her so: "Olive, the other reindeer!" This is a great book to read aloud because listeners can sing along with the well-known lyric. There was a lot of laughter when everyone realized how Olive had misheard the song! I think we can all relate to misunderstood lyrics...
I've also written about previous library programs for adults with disabilities.
