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Every year around Christmas, or even throughout the whole winter, I find myself wanting to read a few classics. But what is, actually, a good book to read during this season? If you want to know which books match perfectly with a good cup of tea, christmas cookies and a fire in the fireplace have a look at what’s on my night stand.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

It can’t get more Christmas than that. A few years ago my godmother gave a wonderful edition that consists of 24 booklets (see picture) and you can read one of them each day from the first of December until Christmas, like an Advent calendar, which I do each year. The story of the moody old miser who gets haunted by ghosts gets me every time.

A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

The neverending story by Michael Emde

A wonderfully written book, that is ideal to read to each other, because its two story lines are printed in different colours. If you think the movie was good you should definitely check out the novel, just amazing.

When Bastian happens upon an old book called The Neverending Story, he’s swept into the magical world of Fantastica–so much that he finds he has actually become a character in the story! And when he realizes that this mysteriously enchanted world is in great danger, he also discovers that he is the one chosen to save it. Can Bastian overcome the barrier between reality and his imagination in order to save Fantastica?

Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Just as it is with the Nerevending Story: many have watched the movie, but nobody read the book. It’s rather short, with just little more than 200 pages, and it’s perfect for reading it to a child. If you love the Little Lord Fauntleroy you should have a look at his other children’s book, „The Secret Garden“ and „A Little Princess“, which are just as wonderful.

In mid-1880s Brooklyn, New York, Cedric Errol lives with his Mother in genteel poverty after his Father Captain Errol dies. They receive a visit from Havisham, an English lawyer with a message from Cedric’s grandfather, Lord Dorincourt. With the deaths of his father’s elder brothers, Cedric is now Lord Fauntleroy and heir to the Earldom and a vast estate. He takes up the journey to the old world, where the unlikely couple (Cedric and his grandfather) are bound to have plentiful hurdles to jump.

The Golden Compass by Philipp Pullmann (Northern Lights in the American edition)

This is the first book in the  „His Dark Materials“ fantasy trilogy about parallel worlds and completely different universes. It convinces through Pullman’s inventive genius and amazing writing. I read all three books straight away and I am still thrilled. Each book has it’s very own magic and I jumped in quite spontaneously and at the end I couldn’t believe that I stumbled across such a lovingly detailed treasure of almost epic measurements.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal–including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.
Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want.
But what Lyra doesn’t know is that to help on of them will be to betray the other…

I hope I managed to entrust you with my christmas favourites. All of these books are mostly child-friendly, although I’d say it depends on each child.

Merry Christmas!!!

XOXO

Sarah