A Book Lover’s Advent Calendar

This is our third year of doing our Book Lover’s Advent Calendar and I can’t wait for it to start (although it’s a good thing today isn’t December 1st because I haven’t wrapped up our books yet).

What’s a Book Lover’s Advent Calendar you ask? It’s a simple fun way to count down the days until Christmas with your favorite holiday books. Here’s what you do:

• Gather 24 holiday books. You can use a mix of books you own and ones from your local library. You don’t have to buy anything new, although I tend to add one or two to our collection each year. If you still don’t have enough holiday books just grab a few picture books off your shelf that you haven’t read in a while.
• Wrap each of the books up. I don’t label most of them, but I do put a sticker on The Night Before Christmas to save that one for Christmas Eve.
• Find a fun crate, bin, or just find a place under your Christmas tree or next to where you read and place all the wrapped books.
• On December first, let your kid(s) pick one book from the stack each night to unwrap and read for your bedtime story!
• After Christmas pack all your non-loaner books away with your Christmas decorations so they will be ready for next year.

While we always love reading before bed in our house, our Book Lover’s Advent Calendar brings a special excitement to bedtime. Even though they aren’t typically new books the simple act of unwrapping them and the rediscovery of books we haven’t read in awhile spreads the magic of Christmas. One of my favorite moments is when Sterling opens one that he remembers from last year and starts telling me about it. We’re making memories at the same time we’re building a love of books.

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Here is a list of some of our favorites that I will be wrapping up this week:

• The Polar Express – one of my all-time favorites and it reminds Sterling of getting to go and watch the movie with his Grandma and Grandpa.
• The Night Before Christmas – I love the classic artwork of this edition and it comes with a DVD
• The Gingerbears First Christmas – We are borrowing this one from my mom because it was one of my favorites growing up and I can’t find a reasonably priced copy to add to our own collection)
• Eloise at Christmastime – Another one that has childhood memories for me.  I love how the words literally flow along with the pages.
• Little Blue Truck’s Christmas – This is still one of Sterling’s favorites, probably because it has blinding bright flashing lights at the end and if you love the other Little Blue Truck books this one is a must-have.
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – This one may take a day or two to read but it’s one of my favorites.
• Bear Stays Up for Christmas – You can’t go wrong celebrating Christmas with Bear and his friends…just as long as Bear can stay awake!
• Merry Christmas, Sterling – This is a new one we are adding this year that you can have personalized with your child’s name and make the main character look like them!
• How to Catch Santa – From the author & illustrator of How to Babysit a Grandpa this one caught my eye this year and will be our second new edition. We love the other books in the series so hopefully, this one will become a new favorite.
• For more of our favorites check out our full list of favorite Christmas books.

There’s a lot more but half of the fun is discovering new ones as a family. Let us know what some of your favorites are!