The Nativity Story is told from a series of different perspectives—Mary, the innkeeper, the ox, the donkey, the shepherds, the Wise Men, Herod, and Jesus—in this Christmas picture book from English author/illustrator team Kevin Crossley-Holland and Peter Malone. As the narrative progresses, each two page spread features text from the perspective of a new figure, telling what happened, until the final page, on which Jesus declares "I am the Light of Light. The baby who will cradle the world. In your heart, hold me. I will never leave you."

Given the absolutely gorgeous cover and interior artwork from Peter Malone, and my fondness for some of author Kevin Crossley-Holland's other work, I expected to like How Many Miles to Bethlehem? more than I did. I like the idea of the narrative, and found the painterly visuals here simply breathtaking, but somehow the text itself just did not work for me. There were moments when I found it poetic, but for the most part it simply felt disjointed and disconnected, like a series of vignettes or impressions, all strung together, but not really cohering into one story. Perhaps if there had been more text, or slightly fewer perspectives, this might have worked better. Still, I did enjoy it, if for no other reason than that it gave me the opportunity to see the Nativity Story unfold in Malone's artwork. I will certainly have to seek out more of it, but as for this one, I don't highly recommend it, and think there are better Nativity Story picture books out there, not least, titles like Jan Pieńkowski's Christmas (you can't do better than the Gospels!). ( )

This book follows the different perspectives of the characters that were there the night that Jesus was born.

the story derived from the bible. the most special part of this book is that the main characters in the illustration are all colored people. It has the poetry pattern" I am...", which makes it include fantasy elements. (animals can talk ) It can be used in literature class. ( )

Hynes Library:
A story of Jesus' birth that gives every participant a voice. Each voices describes what they are doing or how they felt when Jesus was born. It was a trully unique point of view for a young child to learn about Jesus' birth. ( )