Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town: The Story, the Characters, and the Legacy by Emily Zemler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thirty years after it first hit screens, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" still stands as required viewing when holidays roll around. The fantastical melding of horror, whimsy and

Emily Zenker's gorgeous coffee table book delves into the mythos, hype and legacy surrounding the 1993 stop-motion masterpiece, finding nuggets of trivia that have likely eluded even the film's most obsessive followers.

Its 168 pages are crammed with anecdotes, photos, interviews and oral histories that surround the film's historical footprint.

There are also nods to the film's spiritual successors, such as "Coraline" and "Frankenweenie." There are also glimpses of the sundry merchandise that the film has sired, with its characters as firmly integrated into the fabric of holiday decorations as skeletons and Jack-o-lanterns.

While an outsider's perspective may have been more complete -- this book is clearly a Disney-sanctioned product -- the book served its passionate audience well.

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