Hardcover with dust jacket
28 pages
Written by Laura Sassi
Illustrated by Jane Chapman
Zonderkidz, October 2015
ISBN 978-0-310-74556-3
SRP $16.99
Ages 3-8
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Laura Sassi loves to tell humorous stories in rhyme. (Many other writers do too, but they don’t do it nearly as well!) In this new book she turns to the first Christmas night and imagines what might have happened if baby Jesus couldn’t sleep.

The animals try to help. But just as the baby is ready to drift off to dreamland …

Well, let’s just say that things get more crowded and a lot noisier in the stable until Mama suggests that everyone sing, and gathered round the baby in the manger, that’s what everyone does—and then joins little Jesus in slumber.

Goodnight, manger.
Goodnight, stall.
Time to sleep now,
One and all.

Obviously, if you don’t care for books that stray very far from the biblical account, this one’s not for you. In addition to the won’t-go-to-sleep problem, angels dance above the stable and the wise men wind up inside it, with the Bethlehem star blazing overhead. Mary and Joseph are Mama and Papa (when Mary and Joseph–or in one instance, Joe–would have worked out just as well). These are the reasons I can only give the book four stars.

But I can’t help liking a lot about it too. The story line is clever, the text rhymes and reads really well, the illustrations are funny and fun, and the typography’s a perfect fit.

So if your children are already well acquainted with the Christmas story and able to imagine “What if …,” this is a lovely new Christmas book to enjoy this holiday season.