I’ve been enjoying Picture Book Advent so tremendously that I considered extending it with Twelve Days of Christmas Picture Books, but then I decided, no, better to quit while I’m ahead. Already looking forward to Picture Book Advent next year, though!

The Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. Pace the documentary Take Peace, Tudor illustrated this poem as a picture book THREE times (besides including it in her Christmas collection Take Joy!). I have the 1999 version with the most recent illustrations. (Am I planning to track down the others? Maybe.) Like Corgiville Christmas, this has a looser, sketchier style than her earlier books, but I thought it worked better here, possibly because the subject matter didn’t invite direct comparison to The Corgiville Fair.

Becky’s Christmas, written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor. A book with pictures rather than a picture book; an account not merely of Christmas itself but the weeks of preparation leading up to it. Baking cookies, twisting cornucopias for the tree, making presents, singing carols with the neighbors, harnessing the horse to go chop down the perfect Christmas tree…

Gingerbread Christmas, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. This is so cute! Matti bakes a gingerbread band to play music with the gingerbread baby, and the whole village is enjoying the concert in the bandstand when one perceptive little girl realizes that the instruments are delicious gingerbread cookies. The gingerbread baby leads the villagers on a merry chase as the instruments sneak away.

The Doll’s Christmas, written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor. One of the many Tudor family holiday traditions was to have a Christmas party for the dolls, featuring a tiny doll-size dinner (including cookies cut out with a thimble and a miniature cranberry jelly!), doll presents, and a marionette show, all of which were designed to keep the children busy as Tasha put together the full-size human Christmas.

Christmas in the Barn, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. A spare, poetic retelling of the Nativity story, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney that really draw out both the pathos and the strangeness of the story by setting it in storybook New England. There’s just something about taking it out of Biblical times and setting it in a land of plaid flannel shirts, one-horse open sleighs, and red brick inns that really draws attention to the fact that, let’s face it, a baby who is spending his first night on earth asleep in a feed trough is facing a rough start in life. Not to mention his poor mother who just had to give birth in a barn.

The Christmas Cat, by Efner Tudor Holmes, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. An abandoned cat is ALONE and COLD on Christmas until a kindly man (probably the father of the two boys in the book but also metaphorically Santa Claus) takes him home as a pet for his two sons. The boys find the cat curled up on a chair by the fire on Christmas morning. HAPPY END.

The Church Mice at Christmas, written and illustrated by Graham Oakley. My mother’s contribution to Picture Book Advent, based on a recommendation from our children’s librarian who is from England, where these books are apparently quite famous. Love a book where the text tells one story and the illustrations change the meaning, like the bit in this where one of the church mice is yelling his Christmas wishes at Santa… who is in fact a burglar in a Santa suit.

My archive book list was running low, so I decided to spend some time poking around the archive catalogs again to see what else I might find. And to my shock, I discovered a book I somehow completely missed on my first go round: a hitherto unsuspected book by Edward Eager!

“Edward Eager wrote more books?” I gasped, for I’d always thought the famous seven were the only seven.

Yes, quoth Wikipedia, Edward Eager wrote three books beyond the famous seven. The other two I’ll get to in good time, but the one in the archive was Mouse Manor, which just so happens to be set at Christmas (although not a Christmas Book), so of course I had to read it right away.

Mouse Manor is a slim children’s novel about Miss Myrtilla Mouse, the sole inhabitant of Mouse Manor, who on Christmas Day decides impetuously to go up to London. (Mrs. Felina Thompson mentioned that she was on her way to London to look at the queen, you see, and Miss Myrtilla found herself saying she was on her way to London too.)

And so away she went! She hid in a hamper on the train, hitched a ride in Charles Dickens’ coat pocket, and met a dashing mouse in a checked suit who took her into the palace kitchens to try to nab a bit of sauce for the plum pudding that Miss Myrtilla had fortuitously brought… only the cooks caught sight of the two mice, and the dashing mouse distracted the cooks so Miss Myrtilla could flee, only to find herself in the throne room where the cats were taking their yearly Look at the Queen!

Just charming. I loved the illustrations by Beryl Bailey-Jones, too, especially Miss Myrtilla’s delicious candy-cane striped Christmas skirt, which swirls about her as she bustles about planning her trip to London. A cute quick read for any Edward Eager fan.

Continuing my Christmas quest with a rewatch of White Christmas! This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I wrote Yuletide fic for it (Bob/Phil ofc), I’ve seen it on the big screen with the whole theater singing along at the end, seen it in general more times than I can count. (Despite this, I still have to check Wikipedia for the character names. I know who the characters are and how they pair off! I just can’t remember which name goes with which!)

So yesterday when I was taking a sick day, I figured another rewatch could only be good for my health, and of course I was right. Just such a fun movie. I love the song and dance numbers, and pine for the day when Hollywood would just straight-up stop a movie for a musical interlude. Why must everything “advance the plot” or “further character arcs”? Is it not enough sometimes just to watch Vera-Ellen taptaptaptaptap her toe real fast?

Also pour one out for Mary Wickes, who steals the show as General Waverly’s housekeeper Emma. I think my favorite single bit in the movie is the part where Emma overhears (because of course she’s listening in on the extension) that Bob and Phil are bringing their show to the empty ski lodge to rehearse (thus bringing in some much-needed income). She tells Phil and Bob that that’s just the nicest thing she ever heard and then kisses them both, and Bob is like “wowza” and is just about to go in for more when Phil drags him off.

I still love Bob and Phil’s chemistry, and I do kind of ship it but in a way where it also doesn’t bother me that the movie’s whole plot revolves around getting them together with girls. Phil and Judy have fantastic chemistry too, although possibly more shenanigans chemistry than romantic chemistry. (They might be able to work as a marriage, though.)

I don’t love Bob and Betty as a couple, mostly because their big misunderstanding is so movie-contrived. This really is a case where Betty could just say what’s bothering her and Bob could explain and they could sort it all out without Betty running off in a huff to the Carousel Club in New York! Since this is a big part of the story you’d think it would sink the movie, but everything else works so well for me that when we get to this bit I always sigh “ho hum” and wait patiently for the big “White Christmas” finale. Simply a perfect ending tableau.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.

Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.

I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.

What I Plan to Read Next

As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…

If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!