The Ultimate Holiday Reading List
Written By: Astrid Ramsay and Malcolm Boyles
The Shortest Day By: Susan Cooper
This poem about the shortest day of the year and celebration of Yule and Winter Solstice makes an excellent gift for any little ones in your life! If you like snowy scenes, nature, and the outdoors, it is a joy to look through the beautiful colors and images. It includes information at the back explaining how across time, human beings have felt the need for light during the darkest days and to celebrate getting through one year and the start of the next. Initially written in 1977, the poem was made for live stage performances, but I feel like this book is the perfect format for it. Paired with the whimsical illustrations and lovely color palette, it is a great reminder that even during the darkest days, there are still reasons to celebrate, and the dark will not last forever. Brighter days are ahead!
Harriet Gets Carried Away By: Jessie Sima
This book is about a girl named Harriet who loves costumes. She has a birthday party coming up, and everyone will be wearing a costume, of course! Her dads have decorated everything for the party, and she has her favorite costume picked out, but there's one thing missing—party hats. Harriet puts on her errand-running costume to find party hats with her dads and, along the way, meets some real penguins who mistake her for a member of the flock and carry her away. Will she be able to find her way back in time for the party? You’ll have to pick it up to find out! This book is a perfect read for kids who love penguins and/or dress-up parties. It’s also great for storytime, bedtime, wintertime, a party planning idea, a trip to the zoo, mentioning about not wandering off (you might get carried away by penguins!), and is a wonderful feature of a diverse family.
Star Wars: The Life Day Cookbook (Official Holiday Recipes from a Galaxy Far, Far Away) By: Jenn Fujikawa and Marc Sumerak
I love Star Wars and food, so I had to include this one. This cookbook contains about 50 different themed recipes and a few crafts that are perfect to try during the holiday season. Each recipe also includes some details of how it fits into the lore of the Star Wars universe, and I think that is super cool. It definitely has something for everyone! Some of the recipes are very easy and similar to ones you may have tried before, like the Wookiee-Ookiees, which is essentially just a gingerbread cookie that looks like a Wookiee, or the Mudhorn Eggnog made with the giant furry egg of a Mudhorn (actually just four large eggs). I have made both of these, and they are great, definitely recommend them. Others might be just a bit different from things you’ve made before but want to try anyway, like the Rorkid Bread that is garlic knots dusted with some matcha powder or the Bantha Milk Hot Chocolate white-hot chocolate dyed blue with a scoop of fluffy cream cheese topping. I would definitely try those last two at least once, but there are many other delicious recipes included that have the potential to become staples in your holiday cooking if you like them enough. Another thing I enjoy about this cookbook is that it includes a dietary consideration guide at the back of which ones are vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and which ones can easily be altered to fit those categories. An additional helpful thing they included is a page of conversion charts for people who may use the metric system, and I think that is also very cool. In conclusion, whether you are a Star Wars fan or have someone in your life, that is, this book makes for some very fun holiday cooking and bonding activities!
Ella Enchanted By: Gail Carson Levine
At birth, a fairy curses Ella with the “gift” of obedience: if someone gives her a direct order, she’s forced to obey. This book is the reason why I love fairytale retellings to this day. It’s modern in every sense: Ella’s curse makes a rebel of her, and it’s inspiring to watch her use her bravery and cleverness to fight for all the freedom she can get. Kyrria, the kingdom Ella lives in, has all the usual creatures--fairies, elves, ogres, giants, and more--but Ella’s skill with languages allows us to take a deeper look into languages and cultures that are entirely unique from classic fairytales or newer, Tolkien-inspired fantasy. Even the romance between Ella and the prince is refreshing to read. The two of them like each other from the moment they meet, and it’s extremely sweet to watch their mutual admiration turn into a love that endures despite all the hardships around them. Ella Enchanted is a well-crafted, lighthearted read that gets better every time I read it. There’s absolutely nothing better if you're in the mood for a happy ending.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell By: Susanna Clarke
Regency-era England is amazed by the appearance of Mr. Norrell, the first magician to appear in 200 years. His goal: to further the cause of British magic by defeating Napoleon and the French. As he begins to assist the army, a bored gentleman named Jonathan Strange idly decides to pick up magic himself, and the two magicians form a doomed partnership. Mr. Norrell’s desperation to be accepted by the English nobility leads him to invoke magic that he has no hope of controlling, and he, Jonathan, and several others are dragged into fulfilling a centuries-old prophecy.
The way that this story is told is even more interesting than its plot. The Austen-style narrator mercilessly makes fun of all the characters and delights in revealing how petty they can be. The protagonists are hilariously flawed: Mr. Norrell is a snobbish, endlessly-dull hermit. Jonathan is kinder and friendlier but just as self-absorbed and arrogant. And except for Jonathan’s wife, the people they surround themselves with aren’t much better; in some cases, they’re much, much worse. The magic itself has refreshingly new rules and boundaries, and the magical beings we encounter are eerie, powerful, and thoroughly inhuman. It’s an amazing, terrifying world, and as you read, all you can do is grip the book’s spine a little tighter and desperately hope that your favorite characters will be alright.
Kindred By: Octavia Butler
In 1976, Dana, a black woman, is transported from California to some unknown place. She sees Rufus, a young white boy, drowning in a nearby river and rushes to save him. His parents, mistaking her for his attacker, try to shoot her; in an instant, she’s returned home. Eventually, she discovers the truth: Rufus is not just her distant ancestor but the son of a slaveowner in the antebellum South. And to ensure her existence, she has to keep him alive.
Kindred gives Dana’s journey to the past all the nuance it deserves. Dana is thoroughly unlike anything anyone from the past has seen before. Her accent and education are threatening to the white characters, as you’d expect. Still, these qualities also alienate her from the black characters, as does her closeness to Rufus and her relatively comfortable position on the plantation. Dana and Rufus’s relationship changes as he grows up and assumes more power. It’s heartbreaking to watch Dana shift from “modern woman playing at being a slave” to a vulnerable woman forced to make more and more compromises to protect both herself and the people she’s come to love. No matter how old he gets, Rufus remains the same person: grasping, loving, childish, and utterly selfish. Sometimes his cruelty is deliberate, and sometimes it comes from a place of unthinking, earnest narcissism. Dana, the other slaves, and I all hated him, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it entirely; and I think that the author’s choice to work through our love, hate, and fear is one of the many reasons this book is a masterpiece. Kindred is a powerfully cathartic read, and I think it’s perfect for times like these.
