12 Days of Holiday Books: Olivia Helps with Christmas

Olivia, everyone's favorite precocious piglet, lends her family a hand in preparing for Christmas in Ian Falconer's hysterical Olivia Helps with Christmas (58 pages, Atheneum, 2007). You'll probably recognize a few of your family's holiday traditions among the ones that Olivia helps hers with (and "help" doesn't necessarily mean "being helpful", which most parents already know…). Untangling Christmas lights, trimming the tree, leaving a snack for Santa Claus, and of course impatiently awaiting Santa's impending arrival are all covered here.

Naturally, this Olivia book wouldn't be an Olivia book without our porcine protagonist's antics such as feeding baby brother William blueberry pie (with messy results), amazingly finding a perfect little table-top Christmas tree, and recoiling in horror as her father prepares to build a fire in the fireplace and potentially roast Santa!

Olivia Helps with Christmas is one of our family's new favorite holiday books. As expected, kids will love it, but there's enough insightful humor included for parents to enjoy it, too. The depictions of the holiday celebrations, gift-opening, and general Christmas craziness are all spot-on and will probably remind you of your own family.

Find Olivia Helps with Christmas at your library, bookstore, or order it from Amazon.com.