Jan Brett: Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury

My wife has had a copy of Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury for several years. I can’t remember if she got it for herself, or if either my mother or brother’s wife gave it to her. I’m vaguely remembering a coincidence where she gave one away, and got one the same Christmas. In any case she has been a Jan Brett fan for years.

This year I pulled Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury down from the shelf to read to my granddaughter. I’d never paid much attention to it before. It was fantastic! The illustrations are absolutely spectacular. The stories were cute and entertaining for my granddaughter.

The book is a collection of seven stories: “The Mitten”, “The Wild Christmas Reindeer”, “Trouble with Trolls”, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, “The Hat”, “Christmas Trolls”, and “The Night Before Christmas”. All are illustrated by Jan Brett. She adapted “The Mitten” from a Ukrainian folk tale. She used the standard texts for “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “The Night Before Christmas”. She wrote the rest. My granddaughter already had board book versions of The Hat and The Mitten. But I was interested to see that this volume has fuller text for the stories.

All of you who have been exposed to Jan Brett already know how beautiful the illustrations are. So what can I add? I suppose the only new information I have is that my granddaughter’s favorite was “Trouble with Trolls”.