On All My Motions

I’ve been enjoying Picture Book Advent so tremendously that I considered extending it with Twelve Days of Christmas Picture Books, but then I decided, no, better to quit while I’m ahead. Already looking forward to Picture Book Advent next year, though!

The Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. Pace the documentary Take Peace, Tudor illustrated this poem as a picture book THREE times (besides including it in her Christmas collection Take Joy!). I have the 1999 version with the most recent illustrations. (Am I planning to track down the others? Maybe.) Like Corgiville Christmas, this has a looser, sketchier style than her earlier books, but I thought it worked better here, possibly because the subject matter didn’t invite direct comparison to The Corgiville Fair.

Becky’s Christmas, written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor. A book with pictures rather than a picture book; an account not merely of Christmas itself but the weeks of preparation leading up to it. Baking cookies, twisting cornucopias for the tree, making presents, singing carols with the neighbors, harnessing the horse to go chop down the perfect Christmas tree…

Gingerbread Christmas, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. This is so cute! Matti bakes a gingerbread band to play music with the gingerbread baby, and the whole village is enjoying the concert in the bandstand when one perceptive little girl realizes that the instruments are delicious gingerbread cookies. The gingerbread baby leads the villagers on a merry chase as the instruments sneak away.

The Doll’s Christmas, written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor. One of the many Tudor family holiday traditions was to have a Christmas party for the dolls, featuring a tiny doll-size dinner (including cookies cut out with a thimble and a miniature cranberry jelly!), doll presents, and a marionette show, all of which were designed to keep the children busy as Tasha put together the full-size human Christmas.

Christmas in the Barn, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. A spare, poetic retelling of the Nativity story, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney that really draw out both the pathos and the strangeness of the story by setting it in storybook New England. There’s just something about taking it out of Biblical times and setting it in a land of plaid flannel shirts, one-horse open sleighs, and red brick inns that really draws attention to the fact that, let’s face it, a baby who is spending his first night on earth asleep in a feed trough is facing a rough start in life. Not to mention his poor mother who just had to give birth in a barn.

The Christmas Cat, by Efner Tudor Holmes, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. An abandoned cat is ALONE and COLD on Christmas until a kindly man (probably the father of the two boys in the book but also metaphorically Santa Claus) takes him home as a pet for his two sons. The boys find the cat curled up on a chair by the fire on Christmas morning. HAPPY END.

The Church Mice at Christmas, written and illustrated by Graham Oakley. My mother’s contribution to Picture Book Advent, based on a recommendation from our children’s librarian who is from England, where these books are apparently quite famous. Love a book where the text tells one story and the illustrations change the meaning, like the bit in this where one of the church mice is yelling his Christmas wishes at Santa… who is in fact a burglar in a Santa suit.