Book Review | Froggy's Best Christmas

Froggy's Best Christmas is a picture book written by Jonathan London and illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz.

Book Description

Froggy has never celebrated Christmas; usually he's taking his long winter's nap. But not this year!

Froggy's best friend, Max the beaver, wakes him up to join the fun.

Soon, Froggy's gotten into the swing of things: finding a tree, wrapping presents, singing carols, and enjoying a holiday feast.

Join Froggy as he celebrates his very first, and very best, Christmas!

Book Review

Every year Froggy sleeps through Christmas, but this year Max decides to wake him up and give him a present!

"Wow!" said Froggy. "This is my first Christmas present!"
"This is your first Christmas!" said Max. "You always sleep through it!"

And since

"Christmas," Max said, "is about friends."

they decide to wake up Matthew the turtle and Travis the bear as well. The four friends pick out the perfect Christmas tree together and bring it home.

"Christmas," said Max when they got there, "is about friends... and family, too."

There was no hibernating in the woods that Christmas! The animals jam-packed all of the best Christmas traditions into one Christmas day.

The story ends with Santa Owl which was odd and out of the blue to me, but my kids thought it made perfect sense: THEY ARE ALL ANIMALS IN THIS BOOK. I guess it really is that simple.

Overall it was a cute Christmas read highlighting the fun traditions of the holiday and the joys of being with friends and family.

8/10: Great Read

Book Review | Santa Duck by David Milgrim

Santa Duck is a picture book written and illustrated by David Milgrim.

Book Description

Nicholas Duck loves Christmas, and he is happy to try on the new Santa hat that's mysteriously delivered to his house. But when his friends see him and immediately launch into their Christmas lists, he doesn't know what to do . . . until he runs into Santa himself.

I read a lot of Christmas books. My 7 year old brings home at least one Christmas book a week the entire year with the exception of one or two Halloween books that pull him away from all things Christmas. I can say without hesitation: there are a lot of strange Christmas books out there. The Christmas books that usually fall short for me are the ones that suffer from being too original.

David Milgrim's Santa Duck manages to blend cute Christmas traditions with an original story.

In Santa Duck, Nicholas Duck sets out to find Santa before it's too late to submit his Christmas wishlist. As he's heading out he finds a present on his doorstep. "Whoa, baby!" Thus begins the hilarious dialogue in Milgrim's illustrations.

The present contains a Santa coat and hat. At first, Nicholas is very happy to have been given such a wonderful gift.

As Nicholas goes in search of Santa, every animal he sees believes him to be Santa Duck. He becomes increasingly frustrated as each animal recites their long Christmas wishlists.

The genius of this book is the dialogue bubbles between the animals. I wasn't a huge fan of the storyline between Nicholas and Santa. I wanted there to be more of a point as to why Nicholas was chosen to help Santa gather Christmas lists, but the humor amongst the animals more than made up for it. My kids and I had a lot of laughs. Santa Duck also embraces the idea that getting great gifts is awesome.

Even though I categorize Santa Duck with some of the other strange Christmas books we've read, I recommend it for the laughs alone. It's a fun read.

7/10: Recommended Read