Visions of Storybooks Dancing in our Heads

I love a good Christmas book, especially the kid-variety. Some I grew up with. Some came into my life when my daughter was small. And I'm always on the lookout for something that catches my eye and my heart. I wrote something similar a couple of years ago, but that was before GrandBoy enjoyed more than just the taste of a good board book. Here are a few that he's ready to enjoy, I think:

The Little Golden Books 1940s/50s version of The Night Before Christmas. This is one of the very first books I remember as a little girl, and I still get that little girl feeling when I look at the illustrations.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas Well, the Dr. Seuss rhymes get me every time. And it's different - and a different experience - from the cartoon version (and certainly different from the Ron Howard version). Never gets old.


Father Christmas Letters by JRR Tolkien.What an exquisite gift Tolkien gave his children by writing these intricate letters from "Father Christmas." Funny, but Santa wrote just like this when replying to my daughter's Christmas Eve letters. Hmmm.

Peter Spier's Christmas. No words, just lots and lots of detailed pictures, so you can spend as much or as little time as you want talking about it with a child cuddled next to you. Great memories from when Kate was little.

It occurs to me that I don't have any real memories of Baby Jesus storybooks. Perhaps it was because there were so many manger images in our children's Bibles and at Sunday School that a storybook wasn't necessary. Anyway, I'm happy to recant that false memory if something comes to mind.

This is by no means a complete list of my children's Christmas favorites, but they are the ones that first fly into my head when I think of cherished storybooks.

What am I missing?