After blogging yesterday about Thanksgiving picture books, along with my other favorites, I decided to do a separate post today about Christmas picture books. They really do deserve a separate post. Christmas picture books abound, which I thank God for. Reading aloud a meaningful Christmas picture book is so fun! After listening to Christmas music and reading the Christmas story in Luke 2, reading Christmas picture books have got to be the third best way to bring in the Christmas spirit. It’s just so much easier than decorating and it doesn’t involve any calories. This is part of my series to share what I’m grateful for to follow President Russell M. Nelson’s invitation.

Imagine my delight when I discovered some “new-to-me” Christmas picture books yesterday when I visited my public library. See the one above and the rest below.

Don’t these look luscious? I haven’t read any of them yet so I can’t vouch for them, but they look promising. Here’s my list of tried-and-true favorites, with no Polar Express in the bunch.

Here’s one not on that list, that my husband’s family has enjoyed since he was little, in the 1960s. It’s the book below. Just this past month, he had to hunt high and low to find an original copy. It was so fun to see him show it to me last night after it came in the mail. He bought it from an etsy shop. He pored over the illustrations and smiled, saying, “Richard Scarry really knocked it out of the park when he did this book.” His family has a tradition of reading aloud the poem from this book called Grandfather Monkey.

In the poem, Mr. Grandfather Monkey dreams of getting yellow gloves for Christmas. So DH’s mom always has a pair of yellow gloves on her Christmas tree, ready for the holiday ritual of the family Christmas party reading of the poem. Years ago, my DH’s brother bought a copy of an updated version that looks like the one below, including sparkly glitter on the cover, but sadly, it doesn’t have the Grandfather Monkey poem. A few years ago, he gifted a copy of the updated edition to each of his 8 siblings for Christmas. Many of the poems and stories contained are the same, but we have missed having a copy of the poem in each of our homes. My mother-in-law has been the only one with the poem. Each of the siblings can say it by heart. It’s definitely delightful! Someone else blogged about it over here. So that is a second witness of its charm.

It looks like amazon and Target each have a version for sale. I’m not sure if they are true “original editions.” I highly recommend you get the original so you can have the Grandfather Monkey poem. An added bonus is that the original book has a full 3-D pop-out Santa Claus in a chimney in the very front of the book!

Anyway, here are few more of my favorites from my original list, but you really must go check it out over here to get the full list.