The Book of Santa Claus

This is a beautiful book. It is jammed full of lovely pictures and poems. It is very well made w/ a wonderful thick textured cover. Feels and looks like it's much more expensive. A must for those who are true lovers of ole St. Nick!

If you're looking for a collection of victorian santa images, this book is the one. The pictures were amazing, & it's worth buying this book for them. However, I didn't do 5 stars because I thought the text wasn't very good. It mostly rather inane rhyming poems such as you'd see in Christmas cards. There were a couple really good ones, but overall the text wasn't nearly good enough to be put with these wonderful pictures.

I've always been interested in the commercial presentation of the fat man and this book is the seventh in my collection. One of my favorites is 'Dream of Santa' (ISBN 0517186551) which has thirty-three excellent reproductions of Haddon Sundblom's Santa painted over the years for Coca-Cola, another interesting book covers all the marketing variations the company used, ('Coca-Cola Collectible Santas' ISBN 1887432930) other titles cover advertising collectibles. Vicky Howard's book is in a class of its own though. It is a joy to look at because attention to detail has paid off, from the lovely jacket, with its gold embossed title, endpapers, elegant typography throughout the ninety-six pages, to the paper and printing and with the many delightful pre-1920 pictures of Santa, all combine to make the perfect book. Many similar pictures appear in 'Postcards from Santa Claus' (ISBN 075700105X) but this is a more straightforward historical survey and lacks the seasonal magic of Howard's book. If you have young children I feel that 'The Book of Santa Claus' is just the right title to bring out each December and let them discover Santa again, as the years pass and the pages get more thumbed it could end up as a family heirloom. When they are grown up this wonderful little book will revive happy memories of the Christmas season. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.