Kid Konnection: The Story of Christmas

Every Saturday, I host a feature called Kid Konnection -- a regular weekend feature about anything related to children's books. This week, I'm going to share with a gorgeous Christmas picture book.

Summary: Pamela Dalton’s exquisite, intricate scissor-cut illustrations wonderfully illuminate The Story of Christmas. Deeply reverent, richly detailed, and teeming with life, Dalton’s images follow the story of the Nativity from the appearance of the Angel, to the shepherds who came from the fields, and to the three wise men who followed the star to pay respect for their new king. Working in a Pennsylvania-German folk-art tradition, rich with lovingly rendered animals and figures, Pamela Dalton has created a book that takes a deserved place among the finest celebrations of Christmas. -- Chronicle

THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS is a very special and very beautiful picture book. THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS tells the Nativity story using actual text from the King James Bible. Booking Son and I read it this past week to help get us into the Christmas spirit. Plus, I thought it would help both of us to keep perspective on the "reason for the season." It's unfortunate, but things do get crazy this time of year and our family can certainly use a wake-up call every now and then.

THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS truly is one of the books that you can read over and over again. Of course, the story of Jesus' birth is pretty amazing story in its own right; however, the illustrations by Pamela Dalton bring this book to the next level. The pages in this book represent detailed paper cuttings and they are nothing short of exquisite. The angels' wings and the tree branches are so intricate that I can hardly imagine being able to make those cuts with scissors.

This isn't really a complaint, but it is something I feel I should mention... One one hand, I appreciated that the text of the story is lifted directly from the King James Bible. However, on the other hand, it does read rather formally. Booking Son isn't used to his bible readings sounding quite like this since we don't read the King James version of the bible. Although he is very familiar with the story of Christ's birth, he did mention that the words were a little confusing to him and he wasn't comfortable reading the book himself. That could have just been a ploy to have me read the book to him, though.

THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS would make a wonderful collection to any Christmas collection of books. There is no doubt that it will be treasured in our house.

Thanks to the publisher for sending a copy of this book.

If you'd like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children's books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, please leave a comment as well as a link below with your name/blog name and the title of the book! Feel free to grab the little button too!