Rating: 
Summary: A delightful story for adults or children - spellbinding!
Review: A story within a story. (See Sophie's World).
This is a beautifully written story set around a little boy who buys a magic advent calendar. Each day of the calendar contains a short story which takes an ever increasing group of pilgrims further back in time until they reach Bethlehem as Jesus is born.
Hidden in the story is a mystery to be solved.
This book should make adults think and keep children's attention.
Rating: 
Summary: For kids and for adults
Review: Although this title mostly follows Gaarder's style of beautiful writing, intertwined stories and happy ending, it's certainly written with the younger readers in mind. It is a mostly recommended read, both for kids and for adults, especially during Christmas time, which was when I read it.It will make you integrate with Christmas ambiance and spirit, and really make you feel very... "christmassy"! At the same time, its quite entertaining and simplistic style makes it readable during any time of the day. If it grips you as it did me, you could read it overnight, although I preferred to read one chapter each day of December, as the book is designed. Overall, if you're looking for a simple and yet clever Christmas story, for you or your kid(s), this is the one!
Rating:
Summary: Christmas Tradition
Review: Every year, the 1st of December we find The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder in our box of Christmas books, and start to read the first chapter. The book has 24 chapters, so we keep on reading, one chapter every day, untill Christmas Eve. And when we read we follow the little girl Elisabet from Norway around 1940, down through Europe and down through history, untill she, in the last chapter meets Joseph, Maria and the little newborn king. At the same time we meet the boy Joakim who finds a very special advent calendar in an old bookshop, the advent calendar has doors to open, and inside the doors Joakim finds small sheets of paper telling the fantastic story about Elisabet and her travel.
Is the story just a fantasy story, or is Elisabet a real girl, doing a real travel? The Christmas Story tells us about all this, and alot more. For our family it is a must every Christmas. Not all kids want to listen to it every year, but mother will keep on reading it as long as her eyes allows her :-) Britt Arnhild Lindland
Rating:
Summary: A Christmas Tradition
Review: I bought a copy of this book several years ago for my son. We read it aloud each evening leading up to Christmas. Since then, it has become a tradtion in our family to read a chapter a night every evening, usually starting after Thanksgiving. This will be our 4th reading, and already the children are asking if it's time for our "advent book" reading to begin. Each year we enjoy it more, as it reminds us of the deeper meaning of the holiday we celebrate.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and am ordering copies for my sister's family this year.
Rating:
Summary: A Christmas Tradition
Review: I bought a copy of this book several years ago for my son. We read it aloud each evening leading up to Christmas. Since then, it has become a tradtion in our family to read a chapter a night every evening, usually starting after Thanksgiving. This will be our 4th reading, and already the children are asking if it's time for our "advent book" reading to begin. Each year we enjoy it more, as it reminds us of the deeper meaning of the holiday we celebrate.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and am ordering copies for my sister's family this year.
Rating: 
Summary: I feel cheated...
Review: I cannot get over just how disappointing this cloying, saccharine offering is. Can it really have come from the pen of the same man who gave us the magnificent 'Sophie's World'? It is the literary equivalent of watching 'The Sound of Music', or of listening to a toothily sweet Shirley Temple lisping her way through 'On the Good Ship Lollipop', and just as intellectually demanding. The 'storyline' is naive, the dialogue unreal and the characters totally unbelievable! Like a lot of readers, I suppose, I read it a chapter at a time in the run-up to Christmas, and even that became a chore. The whole thing is so disappointing that it has put me off reading any further works by what I took to be a new and significant writer.
Rating:
Summary: Not For This Family
Review: I knew it was bad when, upon reading this book aloud to my family one Christmas, I looked around to find every last one of them asleep -- and snoring! We'd tried valiantly to give this book a serious go, as it came to us warmly recommended with the instructions to read it aloud each night before Christmas. Not only could we not follow the story, certain elements were downright irritating (dialogue, names) and it presented a mish mash of complicated little plots while at the same time seeming to go nowhere. On about night 5 of this, that's when I found everyone asleep, from my grade school daughter all the way up to my husband. That was certainly the best thing about this book -- the funny memories it gave us from that night. But, alas, we had to abandon ship and read something else much more interesting, entertaining and Christmassy. Sorry!
Rating:
Summary: It's really good!
Review: I really like this book!! Reading is one of my fave things to do and I think that this book is really good . . . not the best, but really good never the less . . . I wish I had read it at Christmas though . . !
Rating: 
Summary: A charming book.
Review: It was a rather charming and interesting book. Found it both unique and engrossing. However, not everything made sense first time.
Rating:
Summary: Not one of Gaarder's best works
Review: Jostein Gaarder ranks right up there on my list of favorite authors, but I did not feel that this was his best effort. It is very much in the same vein of "The Solitaire Mystery" (my all-time favorite book) and "Sophie's World" (the book that inspired me to get a philosophy minor in college), but covers the same principles talked about in "Solitaire Mystery". Read that one to get your socks blown off, read "The Christmas Mystery" around December to get in the spirit of the holidays!
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