Christmas Magic by Kirsten Hall and Simon Mendez

Christmas Magic by Kirsten Hall, illustrated by Simon Mendez, is subtitled "A Changing Picture Book."  I kept the image fairly large so you can sort of see (via the lines visible) that it's a book with sliding illustrations.  Pull a tab and the illustration changes -- and not always just a little.  Often books of this type will change just a tiny bit, say from a daylight view to a night-time view of the same scene, but in the case of Christmas Magic, sometimes they change dramatically, which I must admit I found awfully cool.  

I haven't got any interior photos of Christmas Magic because a bit of blogging block (seriously, there is such a thing; I know because I just made it up) set me way behind on my reviews and I didn't feel like I had time to spend on photographing interiors, today, but the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous.  My favorites are the image of a house at dusk, undecorated and then decorated, a chair with a cat that turns to an illustration of a chair with big old Santa sitting in it (the cat glaring down at him from the back of the chair) and the image you see on the cover, which is repeated inside after showing the town at night.  But, they're all beautiful.  

Christmas Magic is another rhyming-verse book.  In this case, I can't say the story makes a whole lot of sense to me.  It just seems like a hodge-podge of Christmas things happening, which ends in a visit from Santa.  Meh.  But, it's so beautiful, I still love Christmas Magic.  I'm just not fond of the text.  I do, however, absolutely love the illustrations and I get a kick out of pulling the tabs.  It's apparent to me that I'm never going to get past the thrill of playing like a kid.

If you've owned books like this, you know that in humid climates the separate parts will eventually stick and sometimes tear.  That's worth bearing in mind, but I bought a few when I had little ones and they lasted quite a while.  It was just after being stored that they had problems, in most cases.

Recommended:  Stunning illustrations trump a storyline that's all over the place.  Too much fun and too beautiful not to recommend, but I'm just not in love with the rhyming text.  This is the last of my Christmas posts!  I've got one more set of board books to review and then I'll move on to the last few books in my sidebar!


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