It always happens at the same time every year. After Halloween is done and not even forgotten Bam! Its time for Christmas.
Christmas begins to show up every where. The stores begin selling decoration. The mall puts up their trees and lights. The radio starts to play a never ending stream of Christmas music.
Normally, this puts me in a bad mood. I sorta get all, ‘bah humbug’ about the whole thing and I want to scream at the world, “What About Thanksgiving?!” It seems that they are all in such a hurry to make the holidays go bye. It is good to be Thankful. Why must be skip Thanksgiving?
I usually refuse to think about Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. I refuse to even look at the decoration. But this year something happened.
I took the kids to the mall and as I walked with my head down, I heard quite the commotion going on around me. “Yook! Yook, Momma! Stars! Lights! Oooo, so purdy!”
I forced myself to look around and saw, almost for the first time, all the wonder that Christmas is. Big green tree sparkling with white lights and red bows on the top. Silver stars danced on the celling. Through the eyes of my kids, I saw the magic of Christmas.
So this year, I say bring on Christmas. I am going to be ready and start sharing the spirit now. That is why, when I was contacted to review two new children’s books. I jumped at the chance. The two books that I was asked to review was ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King‘ and ‘The Christmas Magic‘.
I love the ballet of The Nutcracker. It is just not the holidays for me until I see the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies. But I never realized until I read this book, that I did not know the story of the Nutcracker. I never knew the whole tale behind the ballet.
Now, I really enjoyed this book. The illustrations are fabulous. Each page is an adventure for the eyes in pictures.
But I must say that the book itself was a bit too old for my my kids right now. I tried to read it to Hayden but he lost interest about a quarter of the way through. But that does not mean, I won’t try again in the years to come. Because who doesn’t want to hear a story about a Princess, a seven headed mouse king, a battle, a Nutcracker, Toyland and dancing sugar treats.
The next book, ‘The Christmas Magic’ was much more our level and was a huge hit. Jake, Quinn and Claire couldn’t get enough of Santa and the reindeer getting ready for Christmas.
This book just spoke to me. It is all about waiting and getting ready for the Christmas magic. I loved the reading about how Santa gets ready for Christmas. It made me want to get out my jingle bells and give them a polish.
This short trailer, really does a wonderful job showcasing the book.
Bottom line, I really, really liked these books AND I want to share them with you. The company that had me review these books is offering one copy of each book to TWO of my readers.
That is right, TWO of my readers have a chance to win these awesome Christmas books to share with your family.
If you would like a chance to win, just leave me a comment telling me so. If you want an extra entry or two tell me (in a separate comment) that you are a follower of my blog or subscriber of my RSS feed. If you are not, then become one.
This contest will end on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:55pm EST. I will announce the winner on Tuesday, November 24, 2009.
I can’t wait for you to read these books with your kids. And is it too early to starting saying, Happy Holidays?
