I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you the very happiest of holidays! Since I started blogging in November, I have had the BEST time doing this! It has been such a great outlet for me … I was feeling a bit bored and stagnant doing the stay-at-home mom thing and blogging has been such a great creative and social outlet. Thank you to all the regular readers who make doing this blog so fun and rewarding and not a one-way street! It has been a blast getting to know you and reading your blogs!

During the holidays, I am going to take a bit of a bloggy break and play with the Little One’s new toys and visit relatives so I won’t be around too much or visiting your blogs. I also hope to get some actual reading done! My reading has slowed considerably since I started blogging and I miss it! Plus how can I work on a book blog if I don’t read any books?

And what book blog worth its salt wouldn’t include a book recommendation in its holiday post? So I want to spotlight a Christmas book that has just enraptured my son. It is called Who Will Guide My Sleigh Tonight?and was written by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by David Biedrzycki. (This is one great team — they have a series of alphabet books that are out of this world. I will be highlighting them in an upcoming post.) In this book, Santa tries out all different kinds of animals to pull his sleigh — dolphins, tigers, mice, skunks, giraffes, rhinos. None of them work for various and extremely humorous reasons (e.g., the giraffes get tangled in the telephone lines) until Santa settles on reindeer. The book has wonderful illustrations with lots of little things hidden in them to find (clouds shaped like animals, the ornaments on a tree are all the animals Santa has tried, constellations shaped like reindeer). I read this book to my son’s Pre-K class as a guest reader, and the kids just LOVED it!

When we were in NYC recently, we visited the Scholastic Book Store and got the sequel called Who Will Help Santa This Year? in which, you guessed it, Santa looks for helpers until he settles on elves. This time, he auditions dragons, mermaids, fairies, Bigfoot, mummies, unicorns (see picture at left) and more. The illustrations are just so fun to look at and so amusing. Either one of these books is a great addition to any child’s Christmas library!

And on that note, I hope Santa brings you everything you’ve been wishing for — whether it is a new release from your favorite author or inner peace! And for a little bit of a chuckle, I thought you might enjoy the Little One’s artistic depiction of Santa Claus (the lesser known black-bearded, hip displacement, platform shoe-wearing, two different-size-hand-having Santa Claus). I just got this from his mailbox at school and it just amused me to no end!