Another terrific Christmas book

Today Annalivia went back to preschool. My grandfather picked her up, and I had grand plans to get a lot done this morning. Instead, I ended up reading to Daniel for over an hour, going through all of the books in the Christmas basket and then some.

During the process, he had me read This is the Stable by Cynthia Cotten about three times. This has proven to be one of our favorites this Christmas, a new book received in a package in a Scholastic book order. I'm so glad that I happened to order that package because it has yielded a couple of very nice nativity books.

This one, however, is the cream of the crop. The Christmas story is beautifully told in verse, but the best thing about the book is the absolutely gorgeous illustrations by Delana Bettoli. They are just remarkable -- beautiful colors and lovely, moving depictions of the nativity story. The illustrations have wonderful texture and symbolism (i.e. the faint angel wings in the sky on the cover pic above) and the characters actually look as though they came from the Middle East. And there are many, many details that captivate little (and big) eyes. I think I can safely say most anyone would be very, very pleased with this book. So if you see it when out and about in this post-Christmas time, scoop it up! You won't regret it.

(If you want to check out the book on Amazon, the link is here, but do, please, consider ordering it from an independent bookseller.)