Deck the Bookshelves (or Kindle, or Nook, or iPad) With Tales of Christmas

As I perused the shelves of books in my home and in my classroom recently, I realized that, for someone who claims Christmas to be her favorite holiday, I am sorely lacking in the Christmas-tale department.  I used to have a book of Christmas short stories and poems somewhere.  With the couple of moves we've had in the past 3 years, I presume that book is safely stored in some box, somewhere in the house, packed carefully to ensure it would not get lost.  Right.

I miss that book.  It had 2 of my favorite stories.  The Night Before Christmas and The Gift of the Magi.  As a child, my dad read The Night Before Christmas to me every year.  It was one of those "Little Golden Books" with the gold binding like the one in the picture to the left.  The rhyme and rhythm of the story inspired so many poems of my own -- even as an adult.   As a teenager, I came across O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi in my English class.  I loved the acts of selfless-love and the irony of sacrificial-giving in that story.  Later, I read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  What a beautiful (if not a little scary) story of a man's broken and bitter heart, and his chance to make it all right.  If you haven't read these, I would totally suggest doing so.

This week, my class read and performed a reader's theater version of The Baker's Dozen, as told by Aaron Shepard.  He has a very cool website of free reader's theater script which I use very often.  Looking for a way to help students work on reading fluency?  Reader's theater is a very motivating way to do that.

What Christmas books and stories do you enjoy?  Send me your suggestions for young and old!