The Polar Express is our favorite Christmas tradition. It gets us excited for the holiday and Santas arrival. ( )

1986 Caldecott Medal Winner

Not sure how Van Allsburg did the color illustrations in this one. A little boy travels to the North Pole on board the Polar Express train, meets Santa Claus, and is given a bell from a reindeer's harness, the sound of which only those who believe can hear.

It seems like Van Allsburg grew as a picture book writer between Jumanji and this book. In Jumanji, he tried to illustrate some of the most active scenes and ultimately, I felt, ended up taking away from the text. In Polar Express his illustrations are of some of the least active scenes--the pictures in between the action. In my children's literature class last Fall, we discussed how this is often the mark of a good picture book. The pictures and the text complement one another rather than seeking to out-do each other.

I think that's also why Jumanji made a good movie and this one didn't so much. Jumanji expressed the action and danger on screen that the book failed to completely get across, whereas the Polar Express movie added a lot of action that completely changed the feel of the original book. In the original images, the action stays in the reader's head as the dark train on the page slides silently along in the cold, smooth, magical night, leaving room for the imagination to take over and ultimately doing a much better job than the movie of highlighting the underlying message about faith in the unbelievable.

Update: Snagged this for a family Christmas gift exchange in 2018 and had to give it another read before wrapping it. Still a lovely book. ( )

Independent Reading Level: Grades 1-4
Awards: Caldecott Medal (1986), Children's Bookselling Association's "Children's Choice" Award (1986) ( )

Review to follow ( )

On Christmas eve a boy rides a train through the snow from his house to the north pole, where he meets Santa and is chosen out of all the children to receive any gift he wants. He wants one of the reindeer’s bells, so that’s what he gets. The bell is briefly lost due to a hole in the boy’s robe pocket, but it shows up again in a box under his Christmas tree the next morning.

Chris Van Allsburg is one of the greatest children’s book illustrators of all time for good reason. His art is vivid and huge and close-up and surreal. I love the big dark steam train in contrast to the stark white falling snow. In this case it is stunning and distracts from, in my opinion, a sentimental flop of a plot. Trains are great, snow is fun, meeting Santa is fine. Santa picking only one of the hundreds of children at the north pole to give a gift to is weird. Isn’t Santa’s whole deal that he gives gifts to every good child? And how convenient that he picks the narrator, someone who only wants a bell. I hope none of the other children were going to ask for a roof over their family’s head, or enough food to eat! Unlucky them. The ending trope of no one else being able to hear the bell because they don’t believe in Santa is my least favorite Christmas trope. Annoyingly saccharine. ( )