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The truest gifts of the holiday season are those when you give of yourself.
A true gift of time spen l eading with your child is a gift that lasts long after the holidays are over. Here is a list of wonderful children’s books, both old and new, for gift giving at this holiday season.
• The Polar Express (Houghton Mifflin) by Chris Van Allsburg (suitable for all ages) is still my idea of the classic Christmas story. It is the picture book story of a young boy who wakes up on Christmas Eve to find a train outside loaded with children and a conductor who tells him to get on board for the North Pole. ■*
Once they arrive at the North Pole, the train is greeted by thousands of elves and the children get to meet Santa Claus. One child is picked to receive the first gift of Christmas, and it is the little boy.
Rather than ask for a glitzy toy, he simply asks for one bell from the reindeer’s harness as a memento of this special trip. Then Santa departs and so does the train, whisking the children back to their homes.
On the return trip the boy discovers that the bell has fallen out of his bathrobe pocket and he is devastated at the loss. The next morning he and his sister open all their gifts and find one untagged gift under the tree. It is the bell, with a note signed from S.C.
The little boy shakes the bell, but only he and his sister can hear the tinkling; the noise is inaudible to his parents. The story ends with the boy, now a man, explaining that in time even his sister could no longer hear the bell.
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See READU1Q, Page 16
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