A Dave Brubeck Christmas (CD)

Brubeck delivers a cool-jazz Christmas album that you'll have to break out year after year. It's just him at the piano on this 1996 recording, bringing class and joy to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town; Winter Wonderland; Away in a Manger; Joy to the World; The Christmas Song; Jingle Bells , and more. You're also treated to two Brubeck originals: To Us Is Given and Run, Run, Run to Bethlehem !

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The stupidest angel - Christopher Moore

The stupidest angel: a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror - Moore, Christopher

Summary: When a boy witnesses the murder of a portly, Scrooge-like real-estate developer, he believes the victim is Santa Claus and wishes for the man's recovery, and when the haphazard angel, Raziel, grants the wish, unexpected occurrences result.


BookPage Reviews
A dose of holiday jeer
Most Christmas novels suffer from an overabundance of sweetness or a glut of requisite miracle making. Not Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. In fact, Moore starts off with a tongue-in-cheek warning claiming it may not be the best gift for the grandmother or child on your list. Then again, if your intended isn't afraid of satiric one-liners, twisted small-town goings-on and zombies intent on Christmas cheer, then maybe Moore's latest is the best present out there. In fact, it's more of an anti-Christmas story than anything else, meaning he does a good job of sending up the genre, shaking up all that is normally accepted—heavenly angels, red-cheeked children, eggnog by the fire—yet still creating a place and a cast of characters that is entirely festive and spirit-filled. Not for the faint of heart, The Stupidest Angel is wild in its telling (stoner lawmen, Vicodin-drenched fruitcake) and fantastical in tone (the cemetery dead trade barbs) but most definitely original and likely to join Moore's other books on the list of cult favorites. Copyright 2004 BookPage Reviews.

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My true love gave to me: twelve holiday stories - Stephanie Perkins

My true love gave to me: twelve holiday stories - Perkins, Stephanie

Summary: "If you love holiday stories, holiday movies, made-for-TV-holiday specials, holiday episodes of your favorite sitcoms and, especially, if you love holiday anthologies, you're going to fall in love with My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by twelve bestselling young adult writers, edited by the international bestselling Stephanie Perkins. Whether you enjoy celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, Winter Solstice or New Years, there's something here for everyone. So curl up by the fireplace and get cozy. You have twelve reasons this season to stay indoors and fall in love"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Holiday canoodling stories by 12 of the top YA authors? It's a Christmas miracle! Not since 2008's Let It Snow (by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle) has a compendium of wintry love stories given readers such reason to celebrate. Using her trademark sparkling dialogue, Rainbow Rowell rings in an amorous New Year's between old pals. Matt de la Peña presents a house sitter hookup with unlikely results. Jenny Han writes tales of woe and lust between Santa's adopted daughter and her coworker elves. Stephanie Perkins pairs a tree-lot employee with a shopper who pines for much more. David Levithan's Jewish St. Nick loves his boyfriend enough to (reluctantly) spread some X-mas magic. Holly Black's hot Christmas Krampus crashes a swinging holiday soiree. Kiersten White whips up a delicious romance in a struggling Yule-themed diner. And several other big-name writers—Ally Carter, Gayle Forman, Kelly Link, Myra McEntire, Laini Taylor—craft cozy, clever tales of good tidings. This is the substantive stuff of dream stockings: a rollicking, blush-inducing, memorable holiday collection of breezy, bite-size stories perfect for a snug evening next to the fire. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Dash & Lily's book of dares - Rachel Cohn & David Leviathan

Dash & Lily's book of dares - Rachel Cohn & David Leviathan

Summary:Told in the alternating voices of Dash and Lily, two sixteen-year-olds carry on a wintry scavenger hunt at Christmas-time in New York, neither knowing quite what--or who--they will find.

BookPage Reviews

Heartfelt hilarity from two talented authors

Dash is perusing the 18 miles of books at New York City's legendary Strand bookstore when a flash of red catches his eye. It's a Moleskine notebook with "DO YOU DARE?" scrawled on the cover, and a series of clues encoded inside. Will he take the bait, even if it means approaching the counter to ask for a novel called Fat Hoochie Prom Queen?

Lucky for us, the answer is "Yes." Dash & Lily's Book of Dares is the third collaboration between Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, and the magic they create together is not just holding but getting stronger. Dash and Lily are each spending the winter holidays without their parents, and they begin sending each other on more ridiculous and risky missions, abetted by friends, family, a custom-designed Muppet and the iconic red notebook. Along the way a department-store Santa is inappropriately groped, a baby is catapulted through the air in Washington Square Park, and information is extorted under the threat of a spontaneous recitation from the works of James Patterson. Did I mention the 2 a.m. Christmas/Hanukkah mosh pit?

Somehow all these antics (and more!) combine to create a surprisingly chaste and tender love story. Lily's sweet optimism might soften the "snarly" side of Dash that everyone sees, and he lures her out of a comfort zone that's concealing a fear of life. So here's my list for the next several Christmases: more intelligent, heartfelt hilarity from these two talented authors.

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A Charlie Brown Christmas (CD)

A Charlie Brown Christmas (CD) - Vince Guaraldi

"The original sound track recording of the CBS television special"

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Lucy & Tom's Christmas - Shirley Hughes

Lucy & Tom's Christmas - Hughes, Shirley

Follows a young brother and sister as they wrap presents, hang paper chains, write letters to Santa, and wake up to many surprises on Christmas morning. - (Baker & Taylor)

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Real Santa - William Hazelgrove

Real Santa - Hazelgrove, William

Summary: George Kronenfeldt is an unemployed engineer with one shot to keep his daughter;s belief in Santa intact. When Megan tells him the only way she will believe in Santa is if she can videotape him and then tells her fourth grade class she will prove the existence of Santa Claus by posting her video to YouTube, George realizes he must become the Real Santa. He devises a plan to land nine reindeer on his roof and go down his chimne, , hiring a broken down movie director who eventually has him funding a full scale production that bankrupts him and threatens his marriage. When George goes to find the "Real Santa" to help him, the line between what is real and magic is crossed. Real Santa is a funny heartwarming story of parenthood gone wrong and illuminates what lengths parents will go to keep their children happy.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* If somebody doesn't make a movie out of this book, there's something wrong with the world. George Kronenfeldt is an engineer who is, again, out of a job (he's a good engineer but not a good employee)—and this time it's right around Christmas. Faced with a bleak financial future, George seizes on a new project to keep him occupied: to convince his nine-year-old daughter that Santa is real. That sounds nice enough, until you realize it means Bob intends to dress up in a Santa suit, rent himself some reindeer and a sleigh, build ramps to get them on his roof, hire a movie director to whomp up some special-effects footage of the reindeer and sleigh landing and taking off, and generally tear his house (not to mention his family) apart. This could have been played as an out-and-out slapstick comedy, but instead the author approaches the story like a character study: a portrait of a man with the best intentions in the world watching those intentions collide with reality. It's a steamroller of a story, starting small, with George's idea, and getting bigger and bigger as George tries to put the elements together, as his obsession takes him further and further away from reality. Beautifully done. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Home Alone

Home Alone

Summary: When eight-year-old Kevin McCallister's family left for vacation, they forgot one minor detail: Kevin! Left to his own devices he sets out to have his own private Christmas but two bumbling burglars force Kevin to come up with a bewildering battery of booby traps to thwart them.

Staff Comments: Great holiday soundtrack

Skipping Christmas - John Grisham

Skipping Christmas - Grisham, John

Summary: Luther and Nora Krank decide to avoid the chaos and frenzy of Christmas by taking a Caribbean cruise during the holidays, but their plans have unexpected consequences. - (Baker & Taylor)


Library Journal Reviews
Accountant Luther Krank is a Scrooge for the new millennium. He calculates that he and his wife, Nora, can take a Caribbean cruise during Christmas for much less money than they spent during the previous year's Christmas season. But Luther doesn't just want to take a vacation during Christmas; he wants to take a vacation from Christmas and skip it altogether. This means that the Kranks will not buy a Christmas tree or calendar, put up any decorations, send any Christmas cards, give any gifts, or attend or host any parties much to the chagrin of their hyperfestive neighbors. However, an unexpected phone call at the last minute leads to a change in plans. Hilarity ensues, but the poignant conclusion is unforgettable. Grisham astutely captures the way many people spend the holiday season, from fighting the crowds to commenting on their neighbors' Christmas trees. A Painted House (LJ 3/1/01) was Grisham's first departure from the legal thriller genre, and this further demonstrates his ability to tell a story with nary a courtroom in sight. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Samantha J. Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree - Robert E Barry

Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree - Barry, Robert E.

Summary: When Mr. Willowby's Christmas tree is so tall that he has to cut the top off, he unwittingly provides trees for various people and animals.

Booklist Reviews
Ages 3-7. First published in 1963 with ink drawings and green washes, Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree now reappears in a slightly larger format with full-color washes. The ink drawings are as jaunty as ever, and even more cheerful with their brilliant tints glowing against the white pages. The unchanged, rhyming text tells the tale of a Christmas tree too tall for Mr. Willowby's parlor. The butler whomps off the top and gives it to the maid, who finds even the treetop too tall for her table. So she chops off the top of her little tree, which is retrieved by the gardener--and so on. In the end, the one tall tree has provided smaller Christmas trees for seven homes, from Mr. Willowby's mansion, where Mr. Willowby dozes contentedly in his parlor, to the cozy mouse hole behind Mr. Willowby's chair, where three little mice dance around their tiny tree. Simple, satisfying, and memorable, this old favorite's colorful reappearance gives readers yet another reason to celebrate the season. --Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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About a boy - Nick Hornby

About a boy - Nick Hornby

Summary: Will trades his lack of enthusiasm toward children for a date with a truly beautiful woman and single mother in a comic, incisive novel about modern romance by the author of the international best-seller High Fidelity. - (Baker & Taylor)


Kirkus Reviews
The originality and fun spilling over in Hornby's acclaimed debut, High Fidelity (1995), run deep and strong through this second novel, as a playboy pretends he's a single dad so he can date single moms, but finds his fantasies warped by the real needs of an unusual 12-year-old boy. Set for life in London with royalties from a sappy Christmas song his father wrote, Will Lightman does nothing all day except be cool--something he does extremely well. And he chases women, with intermittent success. When chance throws a beautiful mom his way, he makes the most of the opportunity, even though she dumps him because she thinks he's ready for commitment and she isn't. No matter: He joins a single parents' group, inventing a toddler named Ned, and is well on the way to another conquest when frizzy-haired loner Marcus and his depressive hippie mother Fiona intervene. They all meet on the day Fiona tries to kill herself, and while Will's really just a friendly bystander, Marcus, in desperation, seizes on him as the solution to their problems. He follows Will to see where he lives, and, after quickly seeing through the toddler ruse, takes to barging in on his ``friend'' nearly every day after school. While hardly in agreement with this turn of events, Will is still enough of a boy himself to recognize that the lad needs a hand, and finds himself caring enough to buy Marcus cool sneakers, which are promptly stolen by the gang at school who harass Marcus daily. But Will provides the key that gives Marcus a first girlfriend, and then is repaid in kind when he meets another beautiful mom, falls in love, and persuades Marcus to act as his son to keep her from getting away. Far more than just boys will be boys, this has the right mix of hilarity and irrepressible characters to attract a wide audience: an upbeat, unqualified success. (First serial to the New Yorker; Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate selection; author tour) Copyright 1998 Kirkus Reviews

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Gift of the Magi - O. Henry

Gift of the Magi - Henry, O.

Summary: A brother and sister sell their greatest possessions to buy Christmas gifts for each other.

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Christmas (CD) - Michael Bublé

Christmas (CD) - Michael Bublé

Summary: Michael Bublé has a special holiday gift for his naughty and nice fans. The multi Grammy Award winning Canadian presents Christmas. Commented Bublé, "Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year for me and my family so naturally it's been a dream of mine to make the "ultimate" Christmas record."

Christmas, produced by David Foster, Bob Rock and Humberto Gatica, was recorded primarily at Capitol Recording Studios in Hollywood and The Warehouse Studios in Vancouver. The album includes guest performances by Shania Twain on "White Christmas" and The Puppini Sisters on "Jingle Bells." Bublé also put his unique take on such classics as "Silent Night," "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." In addition, a Bublé original "Cold December Night" will be included on Christmas.

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