Naughty and Nice ’22: Children’s Christmas Books

1. The Bear’s Christmas, written by Brigitte Frey Moret, illustrated by Alexander Reichstein

I’m going to start the list with a bit of a tragedy and a bit of a technicality. You see, this isn’t actually a bad book, not really. Keep in mind that everything I’m listing here are children’s books, so they’re going to be a bit juvenile and clearly not written with me in mind. That said, you can still tell when a book is bad, of course, as you can do with anything. There are standards, even when writing for young people.

No, what makes this book bad is a sheer lack of planning and forethought. This is a tale of a bear wandering the woods in winter and divine intervention diverts his attention away from a sheep he was about to eat and instead shows him a better way to both satiate his hunger and to make it through the winter. The story makes direct allusions to the first Christmas in the Bible, but if it’s meant to actually be the first Christmas, you’d think it would’ve taken place in more of a desert environment.

But that’s not really important. I would not have a problem with reading this to a young child. However, you’re going to need a brightly lit room, because the beautiful illustrations contain a lot of deeper blue and indigo shades, and for some reason, they decided to use black text in the entirety of the book. That’s black text on dark blue background. You could not mess this up more unless you used bright yellow text on a pure white background.

And that’s why this is a tragedy. This is such a beautifully illustrated book and is a decent enough introduction to the birth of Jesus, but it’s ruined by the decision to not place text on the page on a case by case basis and just assumes that black text would work everywhere.

Compare this to another Christian-leaning book about the birth of Christ called The Legend of the Christmas Rose, written by William H. Hooks and illustrated by Richard A. Williams. Whenever the painting was too dark to read black text on, the publisher used white text instead. It’s such a well made book, and it really shows how much The Bear’s Christmas dropped the ball.

2. The Rabbit and the Bear, written and illustrated by Ivan Gantschev

Speaking of a book where a bear happens to see the birth of the baby Jesus, here we have the story of a rabbit being chased by hunters. He accidentally falls into a bear’s den and finds himself acting as Joseph when he interprets the dream of the bear, whom he accidentally wakes up.

I should probably clarify that I mean Joseph as in the interpreter of dreams from the book of Genesis, not Joseph as in the wife of Mary from the first four books of the New Testament. We’re talking about Christmas books here, and I definitely need to make that distinction.

After teaching the bear about Jesus, the bear repays the rabbit’s kindness by chasing the hunters away and using their supplies to throw an impromptu Christmas feast.

Honestly, I like The Bear’s Christmas more. This book is pretty bad, and I feel like it’s a little preachy. This may or may not be due to it being a translated book from Switzerland, and I don’t know how much of this preachiness was in the original text by Gantschev and how much of it was from translator J. Alison James.

Worse than the text are the illustrations, for which I can’t find any credits given in the book itself, but Google tells me Gantschev also provided the illustrations. If that was the art style I went with in my book, I wouldn’t own up to it either.

I feel like I was reaching a bit when coming up with reasons for why I wanted The Bear’s Christmas on the Naughty list. I have no such feelings with this book, it legitimately belongs here. Besides, there’s a better story about a bear and a rabbit at Christmas, and it can be found in my favourite Christmas commercial of all time, “The Bear and the Hare”.

3. Grumpy Badger’s Christmas, written by Paul Bright, illustrated by Jane Chapman

In How The Grinch Stole Christmas, the residents of Whoville celebrate so loudly that they disturb the sleep of their neighbour, the Grinch. Admittedly, he overreacts a little bit, but still, it’s a Christmas classic. The Whos probably should’ve been better neighbours, but The Grinch should’ve talked about their Christmas celebration and maybe everyone would’ve arrived at the same conclusion that they dd in the book, but with a lot less effort involved. The Grinch’s burglary is mighty impressive, though. If you need someone to steal things from sleeping residents, now we know who to look to.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge’s opinions on Christmas should’ve been well known to everyone, as he was such a notorious figure in town, but people still tried to ask for donations or showed up at his door and sang Christmas carols. In the Muppet version, they even sang a song at the beginning which discussed the kind of person Scrooge was, so clearly everyone knew him and didn’t care about his feelings on the matter.

What both of these stories have in common is that people celebrating Christmas seem to hold no respect or consideration for people who don’t. This brings me to Grumpy Badger’s Christmas. It’s basically A Christmas Carol but with not a lot of effort put into it. Badger needs his sleep because that’s how he’ll get through the winter, but no one else is respecting this and then he has a dream that Mole is about to fall from a tree and die, and this brings him around and he pulls a Scrooge and repents and holds a Christmas celebration for everyone. But here’s the thing: everyone knew he was trying to sleep and they kept on knocking on his door anyway. There was no respect or consideration given for Badger’s feelings in the matter, or even his physical health.

What sets this apart from A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge’s character is dissected throughout the entire story. We see why he stopped liking Christmas and we also see his gradual change into someone who can love Christmas again.

And in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch is presented in as villainous a light as possible throughout the book, so we’re not supposed to root for him, but the book still allows the Grinch to find his redemption on his own. He puts a lot of effort into getting rid of Christmas, which makes the ending so much sweeter and we’re genuinely happy for him when he learns that his actions were selfish. We’re meant to approach the story as one of the Whos, as someone who thoroughly enjoys Christmas and can’t understand why the Grinch doesn’t.

Unfortunately, Grumpy Badger’s Christmas doesn’t really work because Badger actually has a good reason to want to be left alone, but everyone is… well, badgering him. His sleep schedule also wouldn’t mean he’d miss Christmas entirely, but apparently you’re not allowed to get any rest if it makes you appear like a miser?

At least the illustrations are great.

4. Santa Claus and the Three Bears, written by Maria Modugno, illustrated by Jane Dyer and Brooke Dyer

Ooof, where to begin?

You can probably tell from the title alone that this is a retelling of the Goldilocks story but with Santa instead. It feels a little forced, because it’s hard to imagine Santa behaving in such a manner. First, he assumes that any food unattended is his, when a lot of families put a note beside their milk and cookies that specifically assign the milk and cookies as his. He found no such note beside the meals he ate. In fact, the illustrations clearly show that the bowls are marked Papa, Mama and Baby! There’s no reason to assume they’re yours, Santa!

Next, he sits down in everyone’s chairs, doesn’t even offer any kind of justification for this action, and actually breaks the baby bear’s chair. I would’ve thought someone of his weight would be able to tell when a chair would be too small for him. There’s no possible way the chair would be “just right” for the five seconds he was able to actually sit on it.

What follows is the biggest issue I have with the story: he decides, on the busiest day of the year for him, that he needs to rest up for a bit and so he goes and takes a nap. Why?! I’ve seen so often, people trying to analyze how little time Santa has to deliver presents to every nice child in the world, and he thinks he has time to get some extra sleep on Christmas Eve? Either there are a higher than normal amount of naughty children on his list that year (and I find that hard to believe, since The Santa Clauses stated that the naughty and nice list is useless anymore because even naughty children get gifts these days), or he’s counting on parents to do his work for him.

And then when he’s discovered, he promises to bring a new chair next year. Next year?! It takes you an entire year to replace one chair you broke, Santa? What’s Baby Bear supposed to sit on until then? Unless there’s a new chair in the gift you gave him and we just don’t know it yet, it’s going to take an entire year to make right your mistake? Heck, even the Grinch, who was lying about the light being broken on the Christmas tree he was stealing, still fixes a light on the Christmas tree he stole, just a few hours later, in the Jim Carrey version of the movie. The Grinch took only a few short hours to deliver on a promise made insincerely that he didn’t intend to keep and Santa requires an entire year to replace a single chair he owes someone?! The actual, magical Santa Claus, is being outdone by the Grinch!?

It’s hard to believe this is the same Santa that got out of his sick bed to deliver gifts to Fred Flintstone’s family in thanks for Fred stepping up to deliver them in his stead.

This is probably the biggest problem with all the various interpretations of Santa Claus. Some of them definitely contradict one another. Santa is somehow both capable of risking his own health by getting out of bed and delivering to the Flintstones, but at the same time susceptible to naps while otherwise healthy. Sure, the universe of The Santa Clause shows that Santa is like the host of a long running game show in that he’ll sometimes die on the job like Richard Whiteley or Alex Trebek, or he’ll choose to retire if he feels like he’s spent enough time as host, like Bob Barker, or literally every host of Countdown who has tried to fill Richard Whiteley’s shoes, and unfortunately that includes Anne Robinson, who stepped down this year after only a year. I may have actually cursed the show last year when I compared it to Jeopardy!, because now Countdown is doing the guest host dance.

So the bottom line is, this interpretation of Santa is pretty lacking and I hate it. This is a book that I legitimately hate about as much as I despise The Tiger Who Came To Tea, which I loathe with every fiber of my being. At least the illustrations are great.

5. The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition, written by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell, illustrated by Coë Steinwart

If there’s one thing that is true of Christmas, it’s that traditions evolve over the years. In the time of Clement Clarke Moore, he thought eight reindeer would be enough. He also envisioned Santa and the reindeer to be tiny like elves, although even then, Santa was presented as being jolly and carrying extra weight for his small size.

Later on, the tradition of Santa delivering presents at Christmas became a morality play, as children were told to be good little boys and girls, or else Santa would not deliver them any gifts. The song “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” suggests that he sees children when they’re sleeping and knows when they’re awake, explaining why they’re never awake when he arrives to make his delivery, and that he knows who’s been bad or good. No explanation is given as to how he knows who the good and bad children are, but many decades later, the Tim Allen movie The Santa Clause (wow, that’s two entries in a row referencing that film) suggests that he just instinctively knows whether you deserve presents or not. The Disney+ spin-off contradicts this process a little bit, but I imagine that even the North Pole accepts new technology when it comes. Santa has also evolved to be the size of a regular person, and his reindeer are normal reindeer now, too.

Even the number of reindeer has grown since his original eight were listed by name. Rudolph was invented for commercial purposes, and then a lyric in the Rudolph song eventually spawned another reindeer named Olive. The company that made ReBoot, Beast Wars and all of the Barbie stuff on Netflix created Elliot, the “littlest reindeer” who is actually a pony, and there’s probably one or two more that I’m forgetting because I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s enough additional reindeer to do a Dirty Dozen parody now.

Apparently the notion that Santa is magic isn’t enough any more, because explanations for that magic are beginning to crop up. Santa apparently teleports his sleigh now? Or at least uses wormhole technology and/or the transwarp network similar to what the Borg used to use in Star Trek: Voyager. As for how he knows which kids are good or bad, various elves have gotten the job in recent years, and it feels like this tradition began in the book The Elf on the Shelf.

Just like when Rudolph was added to the canon of Christmas, The Elf on the Shelf has a big marketing push behind it. It’s more than just a book, it’s an entire product line. Here’s the gist: Santa sends elves out to see if children are good or bad, and they report back. But you must never touch the elf if you find it because then the magic will disappear and the elf will not be able to make his report. This is meant to discourage kids from realizing the elf is just a toy, but at the same time, the purpose of the game seems to be a bit of hide and seek mischief, like you’re supposed to find it. And yet if the elf was real, then wouldn’t he be trying to keep from being seen? And also, if the elf was real and you did spot him, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to actually say hi to the kids and be a bit friendly, right? The whole purpose of this is to continue the tradition of Santa being real for a while longer, so if you ask me, finding an elf who doesn’t say hi to you might break the illusion faster.

The book also calls it “a Christmas tradition” but until the book was published, the only people who had that tradition were the author and her family. This is like when Rudolph was created as “the most famous reindeer of all”, but no one had heard of him until the year the song debuted.

I roll my eyes every time I see anything related to The Elf on the Shelf in a store. It kind of feels like we’re being sold a tradition instead of being allowed to come up with our own. Cinnamon waffles on Christmas morning? Yum. Watching the Queen’s Message on television? It’s definitely not going to be the same now that she’s gone. Killing mutant mitochondria monsters in Central Park? My PlayStation is ready.

Hiding an elf toy to coerce children into being better people? Get out of here with that nonsense.

6. What Could Be Keeping Santa?, written and illustrated by Marilyn Janovitz

Here’s another decently illustrated children’s book, but which is unfortunately slotted into the Naughty list because of the subject matter of the book. It’s a cute story, but I just don’t think the reindeer should be worrying about Santa like this. Santa has always proven to be reliable and never lets good children down on Christmas (except when he does, like in the Tim Allen movie The Santa Clause, when it somehow takes him decades to deliver an Oscar Meyer weenie whistle), and is always ready on time for the big day. (See also a book I cut from the Naughty list, Wake Up, Santa Claus! written and illustrated by Marcus Pfister, but which I definitely would’ve included if I had space.) So what could be keeping Santa today? The reindeer all somehow misread the calendar and were ready a day early.

This book might not be as bad as The Elf on the Shelf or Santa Claus and the Three Bears, but I wanted to ease us out of the Naughty list and into the Nice list with a bit of a palette cleanser.

1. The Church Mice at Christmas, written and illustrated by Graham Oakley

I grew up with the Church Mice books, which I suspect a lot of people my age did, here in Canada. The author is British and the books are filled with a lot of British humour, the kind that loves to lean heavily on irony. The text will say one thing and the pictures will either show another thing entirely, or will show that the text was underselling what was going on. I credit Oakley and several British comedians with inspiring a lot of the humour I use today, because looking back at most of the Canadian stuff I consumed alongside it, the Canadian stuff was lacking something. That might be because all of our good comedians and Tom Green went to the United States to find work, and the only decent talent we had left was Red Green and Rick Mercer until the next generation of Canadian comedians started actually finding work up here instead of fleeing south.

The Church Mice series is about a group of mice who are friends with a cat named Samson. Samson listened to some sermons of brotherly love when he was young, so he vowed never to harm a mouse. In the Christmas book, he finds himself agreeing to be raffled off, as you do when you’re the subbiest cat ever and you’re more than willing to go along with the schemes of your mouse friends. The raffle is the first in a series of unfortunate events that don’t really work out for the mice in their efforts to raise funds for a Christmas party, but along the way they mistake a burglar for Santa and hold him up long enough to get him busted by the constabulary and the reward just happens to be a hamper of goodies perfect for a party.

What makes this book great for children is that there’s just the right amount of suspension of disbelief, since the mice are treated like humans despite being the size and shape of mice. They can hold raffles and negotiate with the winners and accidentally set bags on fire and no one bats an eye. Well they still get chased by the cops for that last one, but any reasonable person would do the same if someone set their bags on fire.

2. The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Feline Classic, written and illustrated by Don Daily

There are so many versions of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas out there that I don’t think any of us should be surprised that it’s gravitated to other mediums as well. There’s an animated special based on the song, and there are books as well. Some of these books put their own spin on it. I guess if Bob and Doug can have a version, then cats can have a version.

Actually, there are at least two different books where felines have their own version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The other one is The Twelve Cats of Christmas, written and illustrated by Kandy Radzinski, but what puts the one by Don Daily on top for me are two factors. One, his version of the fifth day is “Five golden kings” and features a quintet of lions, and Radzinski’s version merely settles for “Five golden cats”. Daily’s version came after, so it’s like he looked at the first book and thought, “I can do better.”

The other factor that puts his version on top is that, unlike Radzinski’s version which focuses solely on housecats, Daily’s illustrations cover the entire Felidae family, from housecats in a box and on a sled to the five lions from the fifth day, to the panthers marching in a marching band, the leopards being served tasty food by gazelle waiters (I really get the feeling the leopards are licking their chops as they look at the gazelles, not at the tasty treats being served, like they’re saying “What are you doing after work, handsome?”), and best of all, my all time favourite feline, the lynxes on day nine. I’m especially fond of the cutie holding the white poinsettia.

3. Bear’s First Christmas, written by Robert Kinerk, illustrated by Jim LaMarche

Move over, A Visit From St. Nicholas, there’s a new Christmas poem written in anapaestic tetrameter in town.

Actually, the meter feels a little off in places, some lines have ten syllables and some have eleven, so it feels as if it could’ve used just a little more work to get it to follow a good flow. What sets this book apart from The Bear’s Christmas is that illustrator LaMarche seems to have understood that he was helping to make a children’s book which was intended to include text on top of his art, and he made sure to leave space. The shades of blue he uses don’t get too dark and the art is never so busy that it distracts from the words.

When a bear wakes up in winter and goes wandering in search of an unfamiliar sound that intrigues him, he comes across various animals in distress. There’s just something about the season of giving that moves even bears to be generous, so he feeds a hungry crow who then joins him on his quest, he does the same for a moose by breaking some ice to get at a bit of grazing underneath, and he accepts the company of a family of pheasants in order to find a warm place for them to shelter in.

In the end, he finds the source of the sound he was after and it’s surprisingly not a nativity scene this time, it’s just a general Christmas celebration. The meaning of Christmas doesn’t make itself known to any of the animals, but the spirit does and the bear leads everyone back to his den, where they all stay until spring thaw.

I feel like this book would be a great book to read to children. Never mind that the bear’s the only animal out of this group who actually hibernates, but I don’t think that really matters here. In fact, I remember once seeing a bear walk by my house in the dead of winter, and maybe that was the bear looking for someone’s Christmas celebration. If my favourite Christmas commercial is one where a bear gets an alarm clock for Christmas so that he can celebrate with his best friend, this book deserves a spot on the nice list as well.

4. The Snow Angel, written by Christine Leeson, illustrated by Jane Chapman

The Snow Angel is a cute story told from the point of view of a family of mice celebrating Christmas. Sam and Daisy run out to play in the snow while their mother works to try to add extra warmth to their den. When a goose crashes down into the snow, too tired and hungry to continue flying south – admittedly a bit late in the year to be doing so – the mice mistake it for an angel and rush to help, finding and offering it some food. I presume the food was from their own stash, but this isn’t actually mentioned.

Once the goose is rested enough to continue and has eaten enough to build its strength back up, it thanks the mice for their kindness and flies off. As it goes, feathers rain down around the mice and they bring their prize back to their mother, who happily lines their den. The feathers keep them extra warm, letting them survive the winter.

Not only is this a very cute story to read to children, Chapman’s illustrations are top notch, and are also augmented with glitter. Your mileage may vary here, depending on how much glitter you find yourself cleaning up, but it’s an unexpected surprise to find a book that makes good use of it to augment such a cute story. The goose’s feathers receive all of the glitter treatment and help to sell the notion that it’s an angel. The biggest reason that I think we’re even seeing the glitter here is because the book is showing us what the mice see. Everything is from the point of view of Daisy and Sam, and that’s why it works. The mom even knows enough not to break their illusion and rather than tell her children that it was a goose they helped, she just thanks them for bringing her a bunch of goose feathers and leaves it at that. Now Daisy and Sam will be able to tell their children, when they eventually have families of their own, of the day they helped an angel and received a gift of warm goose feathers in exchange.

5. The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree, written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain

There are a surprising amount of Christmas books starring the Berenstain Bears. The first of these books was The Bears’ Christmas, back when Brother Bear was an only child and was still learning how not to do things from Papa Bear. See, for example, The Bike Lesson, where Papa Bear tried to teach his son how to ride a bicycle, but his own bike riding skills were shown to be lacking, so his son learned what not to do from him and figured out the rest by himself.

Since then, Brother Bear gained a sister and the family started to appear in specials on NBC, the first of which was an original Christmas story which was then turned into a book a year later. Many audio and visual gags were translated to the page as best they could, including a dancing bear’s song and a spinning axe that almost killed Papa Bear.

In this story, which is definitely in the same spirit as books like The Bike Lesson, Papa’s hubris gets the better of him yet again, for instead of dealing with a local tree seller named Grizzly Gus, Papa declares that he’s going to go out into the woods and find the best tree to use for their Christmas tree. They’ve left it until the last minute, for some reason. I know that last minute gifts have been a thing for years, but a last minute Christmas tree… I guess that’s also a sign of the times. Christmas has become too much for a lot of people to handle, so rushing things at the last minute is something more and more people are having to do. Actually, come to think of it, when did this book come out?

1980. This book is older than me. Getting things at the last minute for Christmas is older than me. This has been a reality my whole life, and no one’s trying to do anything about it.

Anyway, you’d think that this would be an easy task for Papa Bear, but the Berenstains’ world is one which acknowledges that the tree one uses to celebrate Christmas with might’ve been someone’s home. I’m surprised that Papa Bear never realizes this, no matter how many homes he’s just about to cut down, because his home is a tree, Town Hall is a tree, and there’s a clothing store that might be a tree as well.

In the end, he gives up on his search and returns to town, but Grizzly Gus has sold out of trees and closed up shop. (Grizzly Gus had a lot full of trees that afternoon, and they all sold. Last minute Christmas trees.) However, all of the animals that didn’t lose their homes to Papa’s axe gather to decorate Papa’s home to look like a Christmas tree instead, including the eagle that tried to kill him.

Actually, I’m looking at that scene again, and Papa was carrying his children as he tried to outrun the axe, so it wasn’t just him, the eagle tried to kill almost the entire family.

Merry Christmas, kids!

6. Where, Oh Where, Is Santa Claus?, written by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Ivan Bates

Finally, taking my number 6 spot this year is a book that I’m deliberately putting opposite What Could Be Keeping Santa? to show how to do something like this correctly. It’s hard to imagine that Santa could be so clumsy as to suffer a pratfall and need the help of several arctic creatures to rescue him, but remember what happened to the previous Santa in The Santa Clause (I am trying to resist going back and inserting mentions of this movie in every single entry on my Naughty and Nice lists). The reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh start to worry because Santa hasn’t returned in as prompt a manner as they’re used to and manage to enlist the aid of various wild animals to help find the missing jolly elf. The story is presented in rhymes so cute and the pictures are so endearingly charming that I can’t imagine putting this anywhere but the Nice list. This is not a group of reindeer worrying over nothing, this is something actually going wrong and getting fixed right away because the reindeer are alert and aware and know Santa better than anyone else. The reindeer are able to easily communicate the problem to others and together they solve it and actually save Christmas.

This is also a good counter to Santa Claus and the Three Bears because we don’t get to see Santa goofing off. In fact, we don’t see what caused Santa’s mishap at all and it’s left to our imagination. We can come up with our own reason for why Santa needs help because we clearly can’t trust actual published authors to come up with one. Wheeler is smart to show only the aftermath and let us infer for ourselves what happened. Bates is also the perfect choice of illustrator for this book, and I really hope he’s getting a lot of work because this book has some of the best illustrations on the entire Nice list. In fact, everyone here on this side of the list are such masters of their craft that I hope they’re all doing quite well for themselves. And come to think of it, most of the illustrators on the Naughty side are excellent artists themselves and they don’t deserve to get dragged down with the books they worked on.

I had so many books I wanted to talk about here on the Nice list, which is such a refreshing change for Naughty and Nice. It truly feels, sometimes, that there’s a lot of naughty in the world and not a lot of nice, so when finally I can talk about a surfeit of nice instead, I kind of don’t want to stop.

So I’m not.

Books that were unfortunately cut from my top six include:

The Little Reindeer, written by Caroline Repchuk and illustrated by Stephanie Boey, is about a reindeer on Christmas Eve who gets lonely on that one night of the year that his father is busy working, and so he goes and talks to the other animals. The book’s pages are all embossed so that not only can you look at some downright adorable illustrations from a master of her craft, you can feel the footprints of Little Reindeer or the fur of all the woodland animals he meets, like Fox, or Big Bear and Little Bear having growling lessons, or Lynx in a cave playing rough-and-tumble with his cub.

I may have included the overflow list just so I could put a second Christmas book with a lynx in it on the nice list. And oh, what a handsome lynx he is.

The Polar Express, written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, is about a boy who is rewarded for his unfailing belief in Santa by being invited aboard a magical train that takes him to the North Pole. But Infinity Train, this is not, for there’s nothing sinister about this trip at all, no adventure to survive and absolutely no roller coaster rides on precarious rails that the horrible movie version of The Polar Express contains. This is supposed to be a cozy children’s book about Santa, and thus it is. The boy receives a bell, but it falls out of his pocket and at first he thinks he was dreaming, but then he receives the bell among his gifts on Christmas morning along with a message to mend the hole in his pocket. The bell only rings for those who still believe in Santa, and at the end of the book, the boy has grown up and is an old man, but the bell still rings for him. I grew up with this book and it struck the right balance of magic and whimsy for me, no doubt carried by both Allsburg’s prose and his illustrations.

It no doubt speaks to the strength of my top six that the absolute Christmas classic The Polar Express got cut from the list and added to the overflow instead.

The Animals’ Christmas Carol, written and illustrated by Helen Ward, is the answer to the question of, am I against all Christianity in my children’s books? No, no I’m not. The Bear’s Christmas would be on the nice list if they were a bit more intelligent with the colour of the text. The Animals’ Christmas Carol is a beautiful book featuring a poem that is meant to be sung, talking about various animals offering their own contributions to the nativity of Jesus, including animals that you might not expect to see there. There’s a lion included here, the second lion to go on my Nice list today, and there’s a bear here as well. I know lions are associated with Jesus, but bears? I think I know of at least five books featuring big ol’ wild bears finding their way to the birth of Jesus, and I’ve listed most of them in today’s Naughty and Nice article.

This is a very elegantly written song, presented in a very elegant manner, featuring elegant and wonderful illustrations, and I would recommend it highly to any Christian family.