By Chris Van Allsburg
On Christmas Eve a boy who's begun to doubt catches a midnight train to the North Pole and comes home with one silver sleigh bell. For a lot of families it's the book that gets read aloud every Christmas Eve.
It's late on Christmas Eve, and the boy in this story is lying awake listening for sleigh bells he's not really sure he believes in anymore. Then a huge train comes hissing to a stop right outside his window, and the conductor waves him aboard. It's packed with children in their pajamas, bound for the North Pole with hot cocoa going around. When they get there, Santa picks this boy to receive the first gift of Christmas, and instead of a toy he asks for one small thing: a silver bell from a reindeer's harness. He loses it through a hole in his pocket on the ride home, then finds it under the tree on Christmas morning. Only the people who still believe can hear that bell ring at all.
This is the one you buy once and pull out every Christmas Eve until the spine gets soft. Van Allsburg's paintings are dim and glowing — snow, steam, lit-up windows in the dark — and they're the reason to have the actual book in your hands with a child on your lap instead of a screen. The story also gives a child exactly what they want at this age: permission to believe, plus a small silver bell as proof of it. It's short enough to read in one sitting and quiet enough to walk them straight up to bed afterward.