Check It Out: December Holidays

The Check It Out series highlights the most popular texts on LightSail, around a specific monthly theme or topic, based on our user data. Every month we’ll share which books LightSail readers can’t stop checking out. These insights help us curate book lists for our schools that we know will keep students engaged and growing.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again! There are so many different ways to celebrate the holiday season, from baking cookies, to playing in the snow, to spending time with loved ones. Here at LightSail, one of our favorite ways to relax over winter break is to curl up with a good book!

This December, our readers are getting into the spirit with a range of festive themes.

Check out the top 10 titles related to the December holidays:

Title	Checkouts	Lexile	# of pages
1. All About Christmas Trees (Antares Reading)	948	440L	11
2. The Snow Queen	488	720L	11
3. A Christmas Carol (LightSail Classic)	443	900L	104
4. A Christmas Carol (Saddleback graphic novel)	124	1280L	65
5. Balto and the Great Race	106	870L	57
6. Christmas Stories	86	1090L	48
7. Christmas in Camelot	70	420L	66
8. A Ghost Tale for Christmas Time	59	520L	65
9. A Pee Wee Christmas	36	400L	37
10.  December Dog	33	460L	36

As usual, this list represents the broad spectrum of LightSail’s content and the interests of our diverse reader population. Students are enjoying texts of all genres, from the classic to the graphic novel version of A Christmas Carol to selections from Antares Reading on winter fun.

In addition to this collection, here are some of LightSail’s top suggestions for the season:

Fiction

• Let It Snow, by popular YA author John Green
• Winter Pony, perfect for fiction-loving emergent readers
  

Nonfiction (and free on LightSail!)

• Building a Snowman (Antares Reading), beautifully illustrated for young readers
• The Snowflake: A Water Cycle Story (Antares Reading) for your budding meteorologist
• “Despair Over ‘The Bug That Ate Christmas'” (Washington Post), a great article for science students
• “Christmas Kicks Off!” (News For Kids, available at three levels and in Spanish) to introduce younger readers to news articles

From all of us here at LightSail, we wish you and your students a wonderful holiday season!