The Christmas Troll: Sometimes God's Best Gifts Are the Most Unexpected

These days, Christian books for kids can be sugary sweet and not terribly challenging, especially when it comes to Christmas. Petersen has written an adventurous tale of a Christmas Troll who is at first frightening and bewildering to the little boy and his kid sister. But his gentle (and strange!) presence teaches them an important lesson - not just about Christmas but about a life lived in the presence of the Holy Spirit. God can seem strange! Bewildering! Even ugly!? (Just like the Christmas Troll). God doesn't fit neatly into a box, especially a gift-wrapped one. My son is four years old, and asked for this book for a month running. But in general it may be for a slightly older audience. A good, non-traditional addition to your child's library.

I have to agree with Elizabeth Geneva. Will Terry's illustrations are expressive, magnificent and relavant to the the text. My children want any book he illustrates and ignore the text. The illustrations are more than sufficient to provoke a child's imagination and stimulate a deeper appreciation of self, all the while letting a child's mind roam into the wonderment of it all.