Green Apple's Blush: Some of our Favorite Christmas Books....

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Some of our Favorite Christmas Books....

I've been trying to cull out the little guy Christmas books for the past few years and it has been a continuing process to try to move books out of my house, despite the fact that we own multiple titles of the same stories!

Here are some that continue to be keepers:

The Night Before Christmas pop-up book by Robert Sabuda. He does simple yet elegant paper constructions.

Here's a You Tube video of someone going through the book, although they don't show all the pop ups to best effect (sorry about the pop up add across the bottom)....

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/the-night-before-christmas-pop-up-book-robert-sabuda/2b3b30a04e18d50831772b3b30a04e18d5083177-333627786385?q=the+night+before+christmas,+robert+sabuda&FORM=VIRE1

The Snowman Storybook, Raymond Briggs --- and --- A neat, small version of The Night Before Christmas illustrated by Lynn Ferris

Have you seen the video of the Snowman story? Our symphony orchestra played it one year and played the music behind it themselves.... It's on You Tube in several parts. I'll just link the first one and the others can be linked from there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVaj4zkWy0

The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats - this is a Caldecott Medal book.

Texas Night Before Christmas
James Rice

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, Laura Numeroff

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Little Golden Book)

Barbara Hazen
A Golden Book

The Other Wise Man, Henry Van Dyke, retold by Pamela Kennedy

Lori Walburg

An Amish Christmas, Richard Ammon

Firefly in a Fir Tree by Hilary Knight: Book Cover

I have the original, 1963 nutshell version of the Firefly book, but I think this edition looks like it has nice illustrations, too....

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Regena

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The Planting of the Apple Tree, William Cullen Bryant

Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots, and there
Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
And press it o'er them tenderly,
As, round the sleeping infant's feet,
We softly fold the cradle-sheet;
So plant we the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest;
We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard-row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop, when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky,
While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass,
At the foot of the apple-tree.

And when, above this apple-tree,
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth,
Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth,
And guests in prouder homes shall see,
Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine
And golden orange of the line,
The fruit of the apple-tree.

The fruitage of this apple-tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view,
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
And sojourners beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood's careless day,
And long, long hours of summer play,
In the shade of the apple-tree.

Each year shall give this apple-tree
A broader flush of roseate bloom,
A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.
The years shall come and pass, but we
Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,
In the boughs of the apple-tree.

And time shall waste this apple-tree.
Oh, when its aged branches throw
Thin shadows on the ground below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppress the weak and helpless still?
What shall the tasks of mercy be,
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
Of those who live when length of years
Is wasting this little apple-tree?

"Who planted this old apple-tree?"
The children of that distant day
Thus to some aged man shall say;
And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
"A poet of the land was he,
Born in the rude but good old times;
'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes,
On planting the apple-tree."