Eli and Ava were so excited about Christmas this year, especially our “Elf” that visited every day. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Elf on the Shelf craze, but we don’t subscribe to the elf-who-makes-messes ~ I have enough legitimate messes with daily life that I don’t also need to be cleaning up shoes lined up to look like a train, or a toilet paper zip line strung from the loft! But, knowing that the kids really wanted Elfie to visit, I decided to incorporate him into the “24 days of Books” I planned to do. I found a lady on Facebook specifically selling Christmas books in lots of 24, so I bought those and each day, Elfie arrived at our house with a new book from the North Pole library. The kids thought it fun to find Elfie every morning and see what new book he delivered.

I really didn’t know what to expect buying the books in a lot of 24 rather than picking them out myself, but they turned out to be great books! I’m always looking to expand our home library, so thought I would share with you some of our favorite titles you’ll definitely want to add to your own!

1. HOLIDAY HEROES SAVE CHRISTMAS Eli’s favorite book by far was this one. We read it multiple times throughout December (sometimes even multiple times a DAY!). It has all of the holiday characters – leprechauns, cupid, tooth fairy, a witch, the Easter bunny – helping save Christmas when Santa was too sick to deliver presents. Eli liked the comic book-style storyline with lots of witty side banter between characters.
2. SNEEZY THE SNOWMAN Eli and Ava both equally liked this book. Sneezy wants to get warm but ends up melting every time he tries and the kids in the story have to keep rebuilding him. It’s perfect for keeping the kids engaged because they know what to expect with the repetitive storyline. After a few pages, they were even finishing the sentence for me!
3. NORMAN THE SLUG WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS When a bag of presents fall from Santa’s sleigh, it’s up to a slug to get the presents to their rightful owners. Eli liked that Norman had a problem to solve and had to get creative in how to move fast.

Elfie also brought some leveled reader books in addition to the picture books. I’m amazed at how well Eli is doing reading books he hasn’t seen before! The “Step Into Reading” books at level 1 were perfect for his kindergarten level of readiness, and “Jack and Jill and Big Dog Bill” was his favorite one. The “I Can Read” books were a little more challenging even though it also was a Level 1, so if you have an emerging reader, I would stick to the “Step Into Reading” books.

Another Christmas book the kids loved was “Santa’s Underwear.” Since both of my kids are obsessed with the word “underwear” and bathroom functions, it was a no-brainer they would love this one 🙂 Santa can’t find his special Christmas undies and goes through trying on his other undies, but they just aren’t right (Santa clearly must be 4 years old! Ha!).

Here is a list of all the other Christmas books we enjoyed this season:

• ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
• Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Snowmen at Night
• The Sweet Smell of Christmas
• The Elves Night Before Christmas
• Tough Cookie
• Zoomer’s Out of This World Christmas
• The Night Before the Snow Day
• There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow
• Frog and Toad All Year
• Henry and Mudge in the Sparkle Days
• Pick a Pine Tree
• Snowball Moon
• The First Day of Winter