Peter and Lotta's Christmas

Elsa Beskow's illustrations are beautiful and timeless, and she definitely deserves a more prominent place in children's literature. Peter and Lotta are so clearly childlike and lovely. This book shares some beautiful Swedish Christmas traditions of a bygone time -- when gifts were brought by the Christmas Goat. My only misgivings with this book are that there is one part that may be a bit scary for a very young child -- Peter, Lotta, and Uncle Blue get lost in the forest -- and that near at the end, Uncle Blue chastises one of the aunts for encouraging the children to believe in fairy stories. We just "edit" that part out when we read it to our 4-year-old. One other thing that might be useful to know if you are considering buying this book without having seen it first is that a large portion of the book takes place BETWEEN two Christmases. The book opens and closes with Christmastime, but the whole middle section is about the year between them.