16th December A Donkey's Christmas

This morning when I checked in at my friend's blog: Momo Celebrating Time to Read, I saw that she has written about the donkey's view of Christmas because of this lovely book The Little Donkey. This reminded me of the year at school where one of the Year 1 teacher's favourite Christmas book was that version of the nativity told from the point of view of the donkey. It started the library staff on a mission to find other donkey books and other nativity stories told in first person from an animal's point of view. We were surprised to find that we had quite a lot of both, so the Christmas display that year ended up being about the animals at the birth of Jesus. It looked wonderful with all the books and soft animal toys out to accompany them. As well as the many donkeys  there were cows, sheep,  a dog, (Room for a Little One),  a cat (Cat in the Manger), a camel (The Last Straw), a hare (Hare's Christmas Gift), and even birds (The Birds of Bethlehem) and spiders (Spider's Gift: A Christmas Story).

Today I had a catch up with the donkey-mad teacher and her two small girls and we talked about Christmas books as she is doing the 25 days till Christmas with her girls, unwrapping a book to read each night. She said that she had tried to buy the donkey book but it was out of print and then she wanted to know the name of a book to buy about the origin of tinsel and we had a chat about Cobweb Christmas  and the other versions of this story. There are just so many wonderful picture books about Christmas and it does seem such a shame that they only really get an airing (reading) at Christmas. Our school year finishes so early in December that for some books that means they're only read once.

Here's what the library has about donkeys that were present at Christmas:
• The Little Donkey by Gerda Scheidl and Bernadette Watts
• The Lion, the Unicorn and Me by Jeanette Winterson and Rosalind MacCurrach
• Ruby the Christmas Donkey by Mirabel Cecil and Christina Gascoigne
• Father Christmas and the Donkey by Elizabeth Clark and Jan Ormerod
• The Donkey's First Christmas by Susanne T. Schroder
• The Ox and the Donkey by Gunter Spang and Loek Koopmans
• Little Donkey's Wish by Udo Weigelt and Pirkko Vainio
• The Donkey's Dream by Barbara Helen Berger
and some newer ones still available to purchase
• Father Christmas and the Donkey by Elizabeth Clark and Ari Jokinen
(the same story as above but with new illustrations instead of Jan Ormerod's)
• The Christmas Story as Told by Assellus the Christmas Donkey by Janet Duggan and Catherine Robertson
• Mary's Little Donkey by Gunhild Sehlin and Helene Muller

And stories about the spider and the origins of tinsel
• Cobweb Christmas by Shirley Climo and Jane Manning
• The Christmas Spider's Miracle by Trinka Hakes Noble and Stephen Constanza
• The Spider's Gift: A Ukranian Christmas Story by Eric A. Kimmel and Katya Krenina