It’s a really beautiful book with lots of bright festive colors. Adding to this is that every page, as well as the cover, is adorned with sparkles covering the letter and accents on the picture. They’re fun to look at, and fun to touch and scratch (and thankfully, unlike with other similar books I’m not finding sparkles all over the house, despite my daughter’s attempts to scratch them incessantly).
The result is an amazing book that really puts you in the mood for Christmas and the holiday season. Each picture is lovely on its own, but simply beautiful with the addition of the sparkles, from a gingerbread man, to a poinsettia, to a pair of mittens.
I do appreciate that the book doesn’t shy away from having plenty of references to Christ’s birth (imagine that in a Christmas book!) For example, the letter N speaks of the nativity, the letter J stands for Jesus, and so on. There’s a good mix of references to Christ, as well as references to other things that evoke the season, such as stockings and ornaments.
Certain details in the book impressed me. First, there’s no reference to Santa Claus, elves, flying reindeer, or anything of that sort. I know different people have different opinions about Santa Claus, but bottom line, I found it refreshing because I found this really helped put the focus of the book on the real “reason for the season” (plus, there are plenty of Christmas books out there about Santa Claus for people looking for that). I noticed other little subtle details–the cartoon images of baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph have them with a slightly darker complexion which would be more historically accurate (but it’s so subtle that most people won’t notice).
Overall this is a great book to have for the holiday season, especially for a toddler or preschooler learning his or her alphabet.