Coincidence?

The book I am blogging about today is not the book I planned to blog about.  My intent was to read one of the shorter Newbery winners during work and then blog later this evening but as you will soon see today's post is centered around a Caldecott winner.

With all of the Christmas festivities I have not read as many Caldecott books to the girls because we have been caught up in Christmas crafts.  Since I am officially out of ideas of things a 5 year old can make out of construction paper that are Christmasy, I loaded the girls into the minivan and headed to Barnes and Noble for their Thursday morning story time.  That sounds easy enough but if you have ever tried going anywhere with a 5 year old and a 2 year old you know nothing is that easy.  Add to that a tumble in the parking lot and a wait in the cafe for chocolate milk, complete with tears, by the time we got to the kids section we were all desperate for a story.

I sensed a similar desperation from the parents/grandparents of the 6-8 other toddlers who were there.  Imagine our despair when a Barnes and Noble worker announced there is no story time today.  Amidst the groans and sighs one mother said, "if only someone could just read a story" (I am not exaggerating she actually said that).  Well that's when I grabbed the two closest books and said, "gather round boys and girls I am going to read us some stories."

The parents could all relax the kids settled into their seats and I picked up the first book. It was then that I noticed the Caldecott medal on the cover.  The book I had randomly chosen was Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express.  Not only does this book have a delightful Christmas message about believing, but it is filled with beautiful pictures.  What is really fascinating about these pictures is that they do not necessarily convey the most pertinent details of the corresponding text, but they do clearly convey the tone and feeling of that text.  Speaking of text there were quite a few words per page, typically hard for younger children to focus on, but this story kept every single child captivated.

I highly recommend adding this book to your holiday collection. The simple story of a boy who gets caught up in all of the wonder of Christmas and manages to hold on to that belief throughout his entire life was exactly the kind of story those children wanted to hear...and it was exactly the story all of the desperate adults needed to hear.

Continuing to believe...that's kids stuff.