Nana's Book Library

Reminder:  Nana’s Books are rated G.  Anyone could read them, or listen to them being read aloud or talked about; this one has no words!

What a joy this book is!  It’s the perfect read-aloud – because there aren’t any words!  It’s all pictures!  It’s picture perfect! You can take as long as you want and talk about each of the many illustrations, or – as my kids did – happily pore over every page. There’s so much to see and think about.

Peter Spier was a Dutch artist, born in 1927.  His father was Jewish, and Peter and his dad survived the brutal concentration camp, Theresienstadt, during World War II.  Peter studied art after the war, and then came with his family to America in 1950.  He started out as a commercial artist, and then began writing children’s books.  One of his books, Noah’s Ark, written in 1977, won the Caldecott Medal, a National Book Award, and other honors.  But this one, and another one I plan to review in the future, Peter Spier’s Rain, are my favorites of his.  They take place in the 1980s, a great time to be a kid.

Wow, what a detailed story he tells with pictures!  It starts, as the department store layaway’s Christmas countdown shows, with Christmas only 12 days away, and everyone’s in a bustle.  Outside, men are hanging decorations along the street.  There’s snow on the ground.  Every shop on the town square is decorated, and bundled-up people are shopping, and bundled-up kids are headed to a hill with their sleds.  And here we meet a happy family, mom, dad, and three young kids.  They’re window-shopping, the kids go visit Santa, and they head home with bags full of presents.  

Home is a bustling place, too.  The kids are cutting out paper decorations, and writing Christmas cards.  The family later cuts a tree, brings it home and decorates it, and decorates the house and even the dog and cat!  We see the houses on their street as evening comes and carolers come to sing.  

This is a sweet and happy family, and a sweet and happy book.  The closet with the presents is about to overflow.  The kids help their mom on a mammoth grocery store run.  They make Christmas cookies and deliver them to some neighbors.  Christmas records (actual vinyl, not even CDs) fill the house with music.

They go to church on Christmas Eve, and then the whole house is still… that special peace of Christmas Eve… and then Christmas erupts, joyful and boisterous, with gifts and carols and the extended family over for a huge meal.  

This is a book that seems familiar to me because it’s a lot like the Christmases I had as a kid:  lots to do, lots to eat, relatives and church and presents, and the best part:  zero screens.  No devices.  No five people in a room staring at five different screens.  The family’s only phones are landlines.  The games are actual board games or just playing outdoors.  People are involved, interested, excited, active, connected.   And it’s a wonderful glimpse into a family’s Christmas, to boot!

This book is available used on Amazon, eBay, Abebooks, and other used book sites.  I hope posts like this will get someone to reprint it.

©Janet Farrar WorthingtonNote:  I am an Amazon affiliate, so if you do click a link and buy a book, I will theoretically make a small amount of money, but I’m just starting this thing, so I don’t even know how that works.   Still, full disclosure, etc.