The Night Before Christmas
by Clement C. Moore; illus. by Loren Long
Primary    Harper/HarperCollins    40 pp.    g
9/20    978-0-06-286946-3    $18.99

Long’s inclusive take on Moore’s poem focuses on four different families in four diverse dwellings: a country farmhouse, a city apartment, a trailer home, and a house in the tropics. As the poem unfolds, Long alternates among these locales, showing the various preparations the families make for Christmas Eve, their responses to Santa’s arrival, and the aftermath of his visit. Details in the warm and expansive acrylic and colored-pencil illustrations clearly delineate each setting as well as draw viewers in and keep them riveted: the various treats left for Santa (freshly baked cookies in the farmhouse, a Keurig all set up in the trailer); the well-chosen presents the children receive; the reactions of each household’s pets to seeing Santa.

From the November/December 2020 Horn Book Magazine.