This year, Sunday, December 1, 2019 marks the beginning of Advent.

If you’re looking for an activity to remember Advent with your school age kids, I want to tell you about the book we used last year, a gift from my mom.

Jotham’s Journey: A Storybook for Advent, by Arthur Ytreeide, is a saga told day-by-day throughout Advent. The story takes place in Bible times and climaxes with the birth of Jesus.

What are the highs and lows?

Our favorite thing about the book was the way the story tied in the people we know from the Bible who were living at the time of Christ’s birth. It was like a movie full of cameos – you’d turn the page and find that Jotham had run into another familiar character we knew and loved from reading the story of Jesus’ birth.

The book paints a rich sensory picture of the sights, smells, tastes, and cultural context for the time when the story takes place. Descriptions of food, clothing, and the living situations of the characters help kids put themselves in the setting the author describes.

The place it stumbled a little was with the plot. Each reading was several pages long, and most of them ended on a cliff hanger. In order to have so many ups and downs, the author had to take some liberties with the story line. There were times when the kids were on the edges of their seats with suspense, and other times where we were all rolling our eyes and groaning.

The villain in the story, Decha of Megiddo, endures trials worthy of the burglars in Home Alone, and keeps coming back for more. This is in turns frightening, pitiful, and hilarious. For a boy at a time when children were on the lower rungs of society, Jotham garners a lot of attention from the grown ups he comes across.

The four kids who listened were aged 5 to 11, and all of them enjoyed the story. I suggested waiting a couple of years before we used it for Advent again, so they could forget the plot. The kids assured me they would be ready for another go in just a year.

We did the readings as part of our homeschool read-aloud time. We read Monday through Friday, doubling up on the first and last day to take care of the Saturday and Sunday readings.

The book would also work for a bedtime story, but the readings do require a little more time than opening the door of an Advent calendar to retrieve a piece of candy or reading a Bible verse. Each section ends with scripture and a reflection.

Is there a tradition you have for observing Advent? Do you light candles or use an Advent calendar? Do you have a favorite memory of an Advent tradition from your own family growing up?