Book Recommendations: The Bear Books

This morning I caught Tabitha "reading" one of her favorite books and it reminded me that I promised you my pick for best Christmas book to read to a PreK class. Of course, it's probably not that important to any of you now, at the end of January. I'm always amazing with my timing, aren't I?!?
 BUT, that being said,  I suggest you all pin this puppy in your "NEXT year will be the best Christmas ever" folder on Pinterest ( working title) because you WILL love it.
And since it IS the end of January it is a good thing that this post will also lead ever so nicely into some OTHER book suggestions which are maybe a little more seasonable. So I will start with Tabitha's current favorite books. We got a few of these Karma Wilson  Bear books in some Chickfila meals a little while ago, I stuck them in a travel bag to pull out later as "throw away" books when we're out and about to hand the kids and not worry about whether they get lost or ripped etc.- BUT when I finally actually read them they quickly got an upgrade to "part of the Wilson collection of books" and have stayed in the highly coveted "beside Tabitha's bed" spot for weeks now.  We LOVE these books! We have three of them, Bears New Friend, Bear Feels Scared and Tabitha's personal favorite : Bear Snores On

Ransom really enjoys them too, the stories are funny and have rythmn to them which makes them fun for me to read out loud. But Tabitha will regularly pretend to sneeze in the car and then laugh and I know she's thinking about "Bear snores on"...( you'll have to read it to know the reference). To me that is enough of an enforcement. But the fact that there is basically a Bear book for every season ( "Bear says Thanks" is in the fall, "Bears New Friend" is set in the summer, "Bear wants More" is in the Spring...) makes them EXCELLENT books to grab at the library to get your kids in the mood for a new season and to get your preschools talking about the different changes going on in nature. Love love LOVE!

Sooooooooo, when I was searching for a Christmas book and found that Karma Wilson had written a book called "Mortimer's Christmas Manger" I was ALL over it! And then to my surprise ( the Bear books have no Christian reference that I have found so far) this little story of a mouse who finds a nativity scene with the perfect sized bed for a mouse, has a perfectly integrated and easy to understand Jesus-in-the-manger and the whole deal story without shoving it down your throat boring style. It ended up being sweet and meaningful and fun. I loved loved LOOOOOOVED this book!

So, go check out The Bear Books if you haven't already and you WILL fall in love with all his little forest friends, and then sneak a peak at little Mortimer while you are at it and I KNOW it'll be on your Christmas reading list for 2015.

And now tell me what is your kiddos current favorite book?! I know it changes all the time at our house so it is fun to keep track of these things :-)