Happy December and Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and welcome to the 5th Annual Dad Suggests Best Christmas Books of the Year! I absolutely love doing this list, because there is never a shortage of good new Christmas books. Without fail there are a few that blow me away every year, which makes ranking our top 12 a fun and challenging task!
I like to limit the list to 12 books in honor of the 12 days of Christmas – but it could easily be much longer. So this year I’m going to mention a few honorable mentions as well. For the record, I just following my instincts and pick the books we simply enjoy the most each year.
Technically speaking, the books on this list don’t really have to be about Christmas specifically either. It’s very common for me to choose books about snowmen or sledding as well. My official stance is we’re talking about wintery seasonal books here. All these books were obviously released for the holiday season and you just know it when you see it.
And I have to tell you, this was perhaps the absolutely hardest year yet for me to pick the best Christmas book of the year. Many months ago and up until the very last minute I thought I knew what the obvious number one and number two books were going to be, but I had to follow my gut and make several changes to be honest with my recommendations. It’s important to me that I stick to my instincts and suggest the books I love the most in the right order – and ultimately I’m very proud of this list and I think it’s full of some special ones.
There are some familiar names on this list for certain – both artists and characters. We have sequels to old classics and new classics alike. We have previous Christmas list champions, and some of our all-time favorite authors and illustrators as well. It’s one for the Christmas record books!
I hope you enjoy tracking down all of these new favorites at your local bookshop or library, and I hope you have a very happy holiday season this year. All the best to you and yours, and enjoy reading one of my favorite lists of the year!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. These links will lead you to view the books’ listings on Bookshop.org or Amazon.
