Christmas with the Kennedys

Caroline Kennedy shares some of her family's most time-honored holiday traditions in A Family Christmas. After a brief introduction, and a reproduction of a letter Kennedy herself wrote to Santa from the White House in 1962, the book moves on to include dozens of musings on the season from authors, musicians and public figures. It encompasses the traditional (Irving Berlin songs, Bible verses, Robert Frost poems) as well as the surprising (who in the family is a Run-DMC fan?) and is beautifully illustrated in watercolor by award-winning artist Jon J. Muth, who also worked with Kennedy on her anthology A Family of Poems.

A Family Christmas is not quite as intimate as its title might imply—the book includes few personal stories or anecdotes. But the solid selections easily stand on their own merit, and Kennedy's eclectic, erudite collection of poems, carols and stories is sure to become one that readers will return to year after year.