A Favorite Holiday Reading
Posted by Sharon M. Tresino on 16 Dec 2009 | Posted in: Holiday and Seasonal, Inspiration and Motivation, Meet the Mailbox®
I was recently looking through a box of items from my childhood. There were lots of cool things that took me down memory lane: a hat my grandmother knit for me, my kindergarten diploma, and even my first spelling test. (I’m not quite sure why my mother saved the test!) But the item I was most excited to find was my favorite childhood book, The Sweet Smell of Christmas. This scratch-and-sniff book by Patricia M. Scarry instantly brought back wonderful Christmas memories. Of course I took a few minutes to reread the book. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw all the scratch marks on the pages. As a child, when the scents disappeared, I just scratched harder to try to smell them.
I threw away a few things from the box, but I kept the book. I’m sure you understand. Don’t you have a favorite holiday book that you look forward to sharing each year with your students? For me, I’m currently expecting my first child and initially figured I would one day share the story, if not the wonderful scents, with him. But then the best news of all came when I discovered that the book is still in print. I had no idea that this book I treasured as a child is still popular after all these years. Needless to say, I rushed online to buy the book. Now I’m counting down until I can share it with my son, scents and all! I think I’ll practice reading it to my dog tonight. Who knows, maybe Baby Tresino will hear it too!
Happy holidays!
Sharon Tresino
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My favorite memory is hearing my dad read “The Night Before Christmas”. I reaed many variations to my students, my favorite “The Hillbilly Night afore Christmas”. The students then write their own version.
My favorite holiday stories to read to my students is “Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins”, “The Channukah Guest,” and Patricia Polacco’s “The Trees of the Dancing Goats”.
One of our favorite books at Christmas is
The Jesus Tree by Annetta Dellinger. Every year we make ornaments that go along with the story. We send home a list telling what each ornament means with the bag of ornaments. We have 6 classes of 4 year olds and each teacher makes their ornaments different. The parents love it. We have had previous students and their parents tell us that they still have them and put them on their tree every year.
If you want to order the book, you can go on her web site. annettadellinger.com.
I love The Story of Holly and Ivy. It was illustrated by Barbara Cooney. I also like The Christmas of Jonathaon Toomey. Both are very special stories that I like to share with whomever is around to hear them. Do you remember Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree?
Two of my all-time favorite picture books are Christmas/winter books. They are Snowy Day by E.J.Keats and The Polar Express by C. VanAllsburg. In Snowy Day, I love the pictures and the descriptions of the sound his feet make as he walks “crunch crunch”. I acted out the story when I played in the snow as a child. The Polar Express is just so dramatic and beautiful…and it’s made even better now that it has an amazing movie to go with it! The book/movie have become my classroom Christmas tradition, and afterward I give each student a bell.
Is that by the same person who did “Little Bunny Follows His Nose”?
My favorites are:
The Littlest Angel
Polar Express
The Christmas Ship
and there’s a book that I can’t remember the name of, but it’s about a snowman who wanted to help Santa and he got a smile as a gift. My dad has it, and he used to read it to me every Christmas.
Oh my gosh! I had this book too! And like yours, the scratch and sniff spots were totally worn off. Wish my book was still around, though. Thank you for the sweet memory …!