12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 1 Story Time Favorites

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.) 

2014 has been the year of me falling back in love with cassette tapes. Upon watching the Guardians of the Galaxy this summer, my old love of creating mix-tapes in high school was rekindled. BAck in highschool I was JUST transitioning from buying cassette tapes to buying CDs. But I was still making mix tapes to listen to in my car, or to give to friends. I have fond memories of owning cassettes, handling cassettes, and constantly organizing and reorganizing them. Because of this, as careful readers will note, all through my Halloween countdown this past October a good-sized pile of cassettes had made its way home with me from Goodwill. What readers could NOT have known was that I was also stockpiling cassettes of a Christmas persuasion in preparation for this 12-Day event!!!

My 2014 12-Day Christmas Countdown will be dedicated to Christmas cassettes!!! And to kick things off, I will be highlighting a couple of cassettes that feature Christmas books adapted to audio form! 

The first cassette is an audiobook recording of It's Christmas which is a collection of poems by Jack Prelutsky. I am a HUGE Prelutsky fan, and this collection of poems is one that gets read every single Christmas at our house. But here, the poems are being performed by the author himself, and by Alice Playten. There is music and singing included in the recording as well, making this a nice one to put on and play.

Here's a poem from the book that always makes my kids laugh:

Auntie Flo

Every year on Christmas

there's a gift from Aunti Flo,

she's sent me pairs of underwear

for three years in a row.

The box is always beautiful,

the bow is neatly tied,

but I'm always disappointed

when I see those shorts inside.

I wish she'd send a model plane,

or even a big stuffed bear,

I'd take a box of stones and rocks,

but please! no underwear. 

My wife says that when she gets a gift from her Auntie Flo is depresses her too. I didn't even know she HAD an Auntie Flo. 

Hm. 

Oh well. 

Finally we have the audiobook of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas which is an amazing story from an amazingly talented poet/author as well. The cassette has the entire story narrated by Boris Karloff on Side A, and all of the songs from the TV special isolated on Side B. So this thing is basically the audio track from the TV special. And... I am completely fine with that. I own this audiobook/soundtrack/whatever-you-want-to-call-it on CD as well. 

Not a shabby set of cassettes to have to kick things off with, if I do say so myself! I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!