Richard Scarry’s Best Christmas Book Ever!
My little one loves Richard Scarry (or at least the two of his books we’ve read so far.) He packs so much inside his books.
With this one, to start, the actual jingle bells music is printed on the inside of the book. Halfway through, there’s a little Candyland like game. At the end there’s a two-page spread that is meant to be educational, with a highly detailed Christmas scene labeled with a ton of vocabulary labeling items in the picture.
Then there’s the actual stories and illustrations. There are multiple stories within this book, and the stories are written differently in relation to so many of the stories today. There are multiple characters in each story, and there’s so much more activity. The illustrations match the style of the stories, with so much activity and so many details. It takes a while to get through the book, especially if your little one is paying attention to the pictures, but at least for us, it’s always entertaining the whole way through, no matter how many times we’ve read it.
And Lowly Worm and the appletractor is good for a few giggles.
Cautions: There are some aspects of the story that were acceptable in 1981 that readers may be more sensitive to nowadays. Like Dr. Bones crashes his car and bounces hurt Mrs. Cat right out the roof of his jeep. Or Grouchy Mr. Gronkle chases kids with a stick (this one took some real explaining). Or The Bad Twins break stuff, push other kids down, and steal stuff (this one took explaining too, but was easier to explain because it was kids behaving poorly, not adults, like Mr. Gronkle.) This would put most books in the it’s fine or even the skip it categories; however, there’s something about the illustrations and the redeeming aspect of the stories in the book that we love Richard Scarry. Plus it’s a Christmas book and we love Christmas!
