The Good News of Christmas: Celebrating the Glory of Christ’s Birth Story

Between an opening note assuring readers that “this book you hold is just the/ middle chapter/ In God’s plan” and a closing message proclaiming that “although miraculous, this is the one trueChristmas story,” Brasseur offers a fervent but bumpy retelling of the Christ child’s birth. Familiar elements of the account appear—Mary and Joseph tucking newborn Jesus into a humble manger, angels appearing to shepherds, and the wise men’s arrival—but the earnestly reverent, rhyming text relies on awkward phrasing (“for he knew the child was not his own which his fiancée carried”). James portrays the cast of emotive, variously brown-skinned figures against the sun-bleached “Israel of old” and hilly, starlit Bethlehem, gently foregrounded luminescence that befits the story’s content. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)