I'm tired. It's December and it's cold. It's near the end of the semester. And it's Advent (oh blessed season, I am so thankful it comes every year without fail, even when I'm not ready for it) and I am finding myself craving more time to read, write, think and pray.
Blog posts march through my mind often. Sometimes I begin mentally composing. Sometimes I begin actually composing as the abandoned drafts in my folder could attest. I've got a lot of things I'd love to reflect on here, including Advent thoughts and gratitude reflections. But for now they will have to keep percolating.
I did want to share briefly about two beautiful "new to us" picture books we've read this week. Yes, I know, the sweet girl is nine...no longer prime picture book age. But I think she will always love picture books, and certainly I've never stopped!
The two books we've especially loved this week are Patricia Palacco's Christmas Tapestry and Susan Wojciechowski and P.J. Lynch's The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. Both books are beautifully told tales of miracles and hope at Christmas time. Palacco matches her masterful story-telling with her usual colorful, expressive pictures -- and took the story in a direction I wasn't expecting at all. I never seem to be able to get through one of her books without good, cleansing tears. Jonathan Toomey has a lovely storytelling cadence and absolutely luminous pictures by P.J. Lynch -- I do love his work.
Longer reviews of both books coming, I hope, but for now I just had to share how much we loved them both. Perhaps another post will begin percolating...about some of our "old favorite" Christmas picture books!
4 comments:
I never stopped loving picture books either. :) And something tells me the authors and illustrators who create such gorgeous books never stopped either.
Toomey's a favorite around here, and I want to look up that Polacco. I'm so annoyed my link lists vanished; I had all my favorites marked with asterisks. A few I've loved recently are Kate DiCamillo's Great Joy, Martin Waddell's Room for a Little One, Marty Crisp's The Most Precious Gift and that edition of Gift of the Magi I mentioned. There are so many great ones, though; I love perusing the season section at the bookstore this time of year!
Love the Toomey book--read it to my first graders every year, even though it's a little long for them. One year, all of the first grade teachers got to pick a story to read to each of the seven first grade classes, so I read it every day for seven days straight--and still enjoyed it. There are so many good ones I run out of time to read them all to my class.
There really are a lot of wonderful Christmas picture books. I think I really might do another post about some of our older favorites!
Edna, love the thought that you could read it seven times in a row and not get tired of it! That's the mark of a good picture book!
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