If I Could Give You Christmas

by Lynn Plourde, Jennifer L. Meyer (Illustrator)

Overview

This sweet story about animal parents and children reminds readers of the best part of Christmas—sharing beautiful songs, special stories, fun games, and favorite treats with the ones we love most, big and small.

Skating on a frozen pond, decorating the fanciest gingerbread house ever, rereading a favorite story.... These favorite tastes, smells, sights, and sounds of the holiday come to life as parent and child mice trim the tree, birds warble carols, rabbits share hugs, and more. Wintertime celebrations are the perfect time to be together!

Join these adorable animal parents and children as they share joyful moments with each other and discover the most wonderful, lasting gift of all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316628235
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	10/26/2021
Pages:	24
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

Lynn Plourde is the author of many children's books, including If I Could Give You Christmas, If You Were My Valentine, Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud, Wild Child, Bella's Fall Coat, and Maxi's Secrets, which has been on six state award lists. She considers herself a "teaching author," because she makes many visits to schools to teach kids how to become better writers. Lynn lives in Winthrop, Maine, in a house surrounded by woods. She invites you to visit her online at lynnplourde.com and on Twitter @lynnplourde.

Jennifer L. Meyer illustrates books for children, including If I Could Give You Christmas, If You Were My Valentine, the Calpurnia Tate, Girl Vet series, and The Biggest Little Farm: Saving Emma the Pig. Her artwork has won two awards from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles and been featured in Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. She lives in Georgia, where wild bunnies come and visit her backyard. You can see more of her art online at jennifer-meyer.com and on Twitter @jenniferlmeyer or Instagram @jenniferl.meyer.

Editorial Reviews

10/07/2019

A pristine snowy woodland plays backdrop for animal parents introducing favorite holiday sights, sounds, smells, and activities to their furred and feathered children. On each spread, Plourde delivers old-fashioned Christmas imagery via spare, poetic text. A beaver parent, shown in Meyer’s soft art holding up a small evergreen bough tied with a red ribbon, sits alongside the words “if I could give you Christmas,/ it would be the freshest,/ pointiest, piney-est tree.” For two otters, sporting red scarves and whizzing by on a toboggan, Christmas delight is “gliding, snow-white sliding.” And at book’s end, Plourde flips the script—“If YOU could give ME Christmas”—revealing the most important gift of all as a bunny parent and child snuggle in fluffy scarves and mittens. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-07-28
A reflection on the intangible gifts of the Christmas season.

In a series of spreads depicting anthropomorphic animal parents and their young, simple lines of text starting with the titular line "If I could give you Christmas" lead into statements evoking small pleasures associated with wintertime or the Yuletide season. "If I could give you Christmas, it would taste like the first falling snowflake," reads the first spread, for example, and a full-bleed digital illustration shows a lynx holding its kitten up in the air to catch a snowflake on its protruding tongue. Later spreads show various animals receiving "the freshest, pointiest, piney-est tree" or "sharing the brightest twinkling star." Missed opportunities to link these tableaux visually undermine any sense of cohesion, resulting in a book that could have its pages rearranged with no discernable impact on its contents. The concluding lines shift the address to read, "If YOU could give ME Christmas, there's something you should know…My favorite gift at Christmas… / …doesn't have a bow," and there's a closing image of a bunny and its child hugging. It's a treacly ending to a sugary sweet book with little substance to distinguish it from scores of other titles on the Christmas book shelf.

Not a top pick for the giving. (Picture book. 2-5)

Kirkus Reviews