MerryTale, A Christmas Adventure allows the holiday to pop for pre-K and up

If SpookyTale is the sister to MerryTale, then their father is Christopher Franceschelli. Both of them are board books in the Abrams Trail Tale series. They are also much more than just a seasonal book with pages thick enough for little hands to easily turn. Board books have a special place with pre-k kids because they’re something that they can engage in without any oversight from an adult. It’s something that they won’t break, or get hassled about doing and will even help them in the long run.

And with MerryTale, it’s a book that those young children will want to read, and then read again. It’s a fold-out book that doesn’t just fold out. The initial fold-out includes something on the page that folds up. It folds up, down, and out and even has the final two pages doing all of those things. It’s like the Hokey Pokey gone haywire.

The interactive elements of a board book are all naught if the illustrated bits are unable to match its entertainment value. MerryTale, as well as, its slightly older sibling nail that qualifier to the floor. They aren’t as illustrated as a seek-and-find book, but they’re busy enough so that young readers will see something new the first couple of times they see the book. Readers will see a die-cut as the two youths traverse from the city to the forest. The city is in the background, with a window to the forest in front of them. Once you turn the page that die-cut shows the city far behind them, with the forest and its gentle creatures in front of them.

The two sled across a vast expanse of ice to get to a magical house decorated with lights, elves, toys and animals. This house also has die-cut windows that open up via a folding page to show young readers the inside of the house. Santa’s toy workshop is there, as well as, everything that those ages would expect to see there. The action doesn’t stay at the North Pole long because Christmas Eve is just around to corner and Santa has lots of errands. They all go back to the big city where our two main characters came from as the final two pages expand into a mind-bending six-page spreadapalooza.

MerryTale is a board book that’s bigger than most board books in that it’s rectangular and not square. It’s a subtle difference, but one that slightly older readers (See: those four-year-olds) will appreciate. This isn’t the square, baby book that their younger siblings are reading. It’s a board book that still offers the fun that they want, with the fold-out, seek-and-find aspect that will delight those pre-k kids all the way through kindergarten.

MerryTale, A Christmas Adventure is an Abrams Trail Tale and by Christopher Franceschelli with art by Allison Black and is available on Abrams Appleseed, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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