‘It was Christmas, nearly a year after Mother died. I cannot write about Mother—but I will just say one thing. If she had only been away for a little while, and not for always, we shouldn’t have been so keen on having a Christmas. I didn’t understand this then, but I am much older now, and … Continue reading
Returning home through the wild woods, Mole and Rat take a detour and visit Mole’s long forgotten home. A group of carol singing field mice come to call and although there is no pâté de foie gras or champagne on offer, there is a roaring fire and a jug of mulled ale. It might be a little … Continue reading
The escapades of Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerby children come with an added layer of muted pleasure thanks to the thick snow that covers everything in Noisy Village at this time of year. There are no strong girls, pet monkeys or outlandish sets of bunches to be found here, instead the sacred moments of the holiday season … Continue reading
Between the ages of 13¾ and 16, Adrian Albert Mole recorded memories of his less than perfect Christmases. As well as being incredibly funny, Sue Townsend’s books are fantastic time capsules of British consumer culture in the early 1980s. I too remember buying all my Christmas presents for under a pound from Woolies and enjoying family … Continue reading
‘The smaller you are, the bigger Christmas is.’ Tove Jansson’s present tense recollections of her childhood Christmases, first collected in her memoir Sculptor’s Daughter, contain the same combination of pragmatism and fantasy that runs through the Moomin stories. But where her trolls feared the coming of the spruce in her story The Fir Tree, young … Continue reading
In the ‘difficult’ final Moomin novel, Tove Jansson takes the audacious step of entirely excising her core cast, focusing instead on a disparate group visitors who gather at the family’s home, but find them missing. It was a move that didn’t exactly go down well with readers at the time: Moominvalley in November was anticipated … Continue reading
Tove Jansson was a long term fan of Lewis Carroll’s work and had studied the layout of his books (with John Tenniel’s illustrations) when creating Comet in Moominland. So the suggestion that she supply illustrations for a new edition of The Hunting of the Snark, with its cast of strange characters and surreal comic tone … Continue reading
This is how the story begins. In the dark dark town there was a dark dark street. In the dark dark street there was a dark dark house. In the dark dark house there was a dark dark staircase. Down the dark dark staircase there was a dark dark cellar. And in the dark dark cellar… Funnybones was 40! Continue reading
“Dido Twite (the enchanting heroine of Black Hearts in Battersea), waking from a long sleep to foil Miss Slighcarp, the wicked governess, in her plan to assassinate King James III by long-distance-gun – and her greatest ally is a pink whale called Rosie.” Croopus! What a blurb. These words appear on the back of the … Continue reading
I love seaside books. Books about long empty beaches, old towns stuck in time and mysterious things that wash up on beaches. Or pop out of clam shells, like the toy twins discovered by young Mary in William Nicholson’s practically perfect The Pirate Twins. Published in 1929, around the time of Hergè’s Tintin in … Continue reading
In Stig of the Dump by Clive King, bored Barney meets a Stone Age boy in a rubbish filled chalk pit near his grandmother’s home. Despite being unable to speak to each other the boys strike up a friendship based around the mutual pleasure of making and fixing stuff using bits of rusty cars, broken … Continue reading
Over the course of lockdown I’ve been keeping myself sane by running a series of World Cups on Twitter covering children’s books, kid’s TV and now the characters of Roald Dahl. Golden tickets at the ready… Beginning today, the most giganticus twitter poll yet. The #WorldCupofRoaldDahl! 64 characters from 16 books compete to win the … Continue reading
As everything else has been cancelled this year I’ve been running a World Cup of Children’s Books on Twitter. Classic titles from the 19th century to the present day have been fighting it out in a series of themed matches. THE WORLD CUP OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS STARTS NOW 192 beloved books for children of all … Continue reading
If you read the last part of this series you’ll know that Robin, Damian Wayne was murdered by his clone brother. But they couldn’t let him lie and Damian was dug up by his evil grandfather before being dunked in every life restoring Lazarus pit from Gotham to Timbuktu. But for a while there was a … Continue reading
One of the troubles with Robin is that he’s prone to getting himself killed. In part one of my history of Batman’s perky teenage pal we discovered that this is nothing new. Back in the 1980s DC comics held a phone vote to decide whether troublesome Jason Todd (Robin #2) should die at the hands … Continue reading
The last 80 years haven’t been kind to Robin. During that time he’s made some terrible fashion choices and been dogged by persistent rumours over his sexuality. He became a girl for a while. His parents keep getting murdered. He’s died himself, repeatedly only to be resurrected and finally came home as Bruce Wayne’s demon son. Continue reading
One of the 100 best children’s books of the 21st century, SF Said’s Varjak Paw follows the adventures of a Mesopotamian Blue cat as he escapes his stultifying purebred family to find his way in the world. The books are bountifully illustrated by Dave McKean, an artist previously best known for his work with Neil … Continue reading
The newest book to appear on my crowd sourced list of the 100 Best Children’s Books of the 21st Century, The Girl who Speaks Bear sees Sophie Anderson return to the territory of her debut, The House With Chicken Legs. Rooted in Slavic folklore her stories expertly blend tales which are likely unfamiliar to young … Continue reading
“I know what it’s like to be small in the city…” Many picture books use a wintry setting to convey a sense of wonder and excitement. Snow can have a transformative beauty, while a great winter storm brings danger cloaked in cosiness. In Sydney Smith’s Small in the City the weather closes in around its … Continue reading
“So the Shortest Day came and the year died” This is a picture book rebirth of a 1974 poem originally written by Dark is Rising author Susan Cooper for the annual Christmas Revel shows, a fusion of medieval and modern music and poetry. “And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, … Continue reading
There are certain smells and sounds that can transport you straight back to childhood. For me paint and pencil textures do exactly the same thing: Shirley Hughes deep nostalgic hues, Quentin Blake’s busy, youthful lines and perhaps deepest of all the work of John Burningham. While Mr Gumpy’s Outing captures all the heat and vibrancy … Continue reading
A leading chronicler of British festive traditions since she first invited us to visit Lucy and Tom at Christmas in 1981, Shirley Hughes take readers to places other children’s authors cannot reach. Like much of her work, Burning the Tree is a result of her keen observation skills. Writing in A Life Drawing Hughes explains how … Continue reading
Judith Kerr based her Mog books on the peculiar behaviour of the nine cats she shared a home with during her long and impressive life. In her autobiography ‘Creatures’ she says that the best of these stories were based on real events. The sixth book in the series was inspired by Felix, son of Posy … Continue reading
Many years before Michael Rosen sent a family on a bear hunt, three other children set forth into the British countryside under a low winter sun. They observe all kinds of natural sights, from cows to hungry birds, before discovering a brown knitted bear stuck up a tree. As the snow begins to fall, they … Continue reading
The late 1960s saw a creative reawakening of the British folk tradition, in music, film and literature it was the earthy flip-side to the gloss of the swinging sixties pop culture. Children’s books proved a fertile ground for the old myths and legends and powerfully showed how they are never too deeply hidden from the … Continue reading
I could fill this entire Advent calendar with fantastic wintry books by the legendary illustrator Roger Duvoisin – in fact I pretty much have, here, here and here. But perhaps his most garlanded title is Bright Snow, White Snow for which won the Caldecott Medal in 1948. One of the key practitioners of American mid-century … Continue reading
It’s been nearly 25 years since Philip Pullman published Northern Lights, the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Since then the books have become classics and are partly responsible for kickstarting the current boom in children’s publishing. Northern Lights has also spawned a movie adaptation, stage play and now a magnificent BBC … Continue reading
In Once Upon a Northern Night the French/ Canadian illustrator Isabelle Arsenault collaborates with writer Jean E. Pendziwol, who draws on her native Lake Superior in northern Ontario. It’s a story to be read aloud at bedtime on a frosty night. The text is deliberately old fashioned, the refrain Once Upon a Northern Night providing … Continue reading
Sometimes a book can get weighed down by its cultural baggage, The Snowy Day more than most. In 1962 New Yorker Ezra Jack Keats produced one of the first children’s books with a black protagonist. At first it was hailed as a landmark in publishing, but as time went by its intentions began to be … Continue reading
What can be said about The Snowman that hasn’t already been said? It is as much a part of popular Christmas tradition as Slade or that episode of Father Ted where the priests get lost in the lingerie department. Raymond Briggs is certainly fed up with talking about it, but thankfully in 2014 a first … Continue reading
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a book all about sensations, of cold and fear, warmth and happiness, food and starvation. From the very first page you really feel as if you’re in this world. “Snow lay thick, too, upon the roof of Willoughby Chase… The house was all alight within, and the joyous … Continue reading
Chirri and Chirra are two identical Japanese children who live in a hut on the edge of a forest. Each of their adventures sees them set off on their bicycles for an adventure in the natural world. In the Snowy Day the children are even more rosy cheeked than normal, as they ignore the unsuitable … Continue reading
The weather plays a central role in Lucy M. Boston’s The Children of Green Knowe, the plot turning on a new twist in the winter conditions, from floods to snow, ice to thunder storms. The story begins with the hero, seven-year-old Tolly, taking a train through a flooded English landscape, delivering him to the aptly … Continue reading
In England it is a long, well established fact that the person who delivers our presents is a benevolent, if sometimes grumpy old man called Father Christmas. Americans have their jolly, Coca Cola sponsored Santa Claus. But look further, into the darker reaches of the northern European imagination and the picture becomes much stranger. In … Continue reading
“It is winter in Narnia,” said Mr. Tumnus, “and has been for ever so long…. always winter, but never Christmas.” I can now count the ways that C.S. Lewis laid traps for my younger self to become obsessed with his secret world. A portal hidden in an empty old house. Talking animals serving tea in cosy dwellings. But … Continue reading
The Snow Angel tells the story of a young girl with a love of the natural world and adventure who loses her parents to Ebola then finds herself rejected by her adopted family and plunged into an even more dangerous world. Her plight is lightened by the arrival a new friend and the occasional appearance … Continue reading
A rare example of a winter themed picture book set in an urban environment, the best known of which is Ezra Jack Keats’ similarly titled The Snowy Day. That book famously achieved distinction by casting black children but refused to make reference to their race. Here Komako Sakai does the same, except with rabbits. Sakai … Continue reading
Brambly Hedge is an English Arcadia suffused with the spirit of Beatrix Potter and Arthur Rackham. The Secret Staircase is the fifth story in the series, and the second to feature a winter setting. Jill Barklem’s work is famously intricate and impressively well researched. She spent five years looking at the landscape around her home … Continue reading
‘Once upon a time, a hundred years ago there was a dark and stormy girl.’ With echoes of the Brothers Grimm and Snoopy, The Wolf Wilder is a book that already feels like another classic from Katherine Rundell. Adding to that effect are atmospheric illustrations throughout by Gelrev Ongbico who talks here about the process … Continue reading
Arnold Lobel wrote his Frog and Toad books to help children learn to read but like Dr. Seuss before him Lobel achieved so much more. Through his characters, uptight Toad and optimistic Frog, he created one of the most tender and believable representations of friendship, and possibly the first same sex relationship in children’s … Continue reading
Following on from last year’s list of the best Christmas books for children, 2019 sees a gathering of the very finest illustrated tales of snow, ice and winter magic. These are stories imbued with the sense of wonder and possibility which is evident during the winter months. And when the real world is distinctly lacking … Continue reading
Tom Fobble’s Day is the final part in a quartet of books inspired by Alan Garner’s family who lived at Alderley Edge, a hill of Arthurian legend in Cheshire. It’a a series crafted with such symmetry and beauty that you gasp, just as its protagonist does as he takes his maiden journey down Lizzie Leah’s … Continue reading
In this week’s Deeper Reading podcast, Damaris Young discusses how the Lie Tree inspired her debut children’s novel, the Switching Hour. Perfect reading for Halloween. Continue reading
In September the Guardian published the 100 books of the 21st Century. It contained only five children’s books, two of which were published in the year 2000 – wrong century – and featured ZERO picture books. Outrage! I was spurred to action and rallied the troops on Twitter. Over 1000 votes and 600 nominated books later and I had what felt like a pretty representative list of the vast range of incredible children’s books published since 2001. Continue reading
The chronology of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books is nearly as hard to work out as the fluctuating time anomalies between time in our world and the land beyond the wardrobe. The Silver Chair is commonly presented today as the sixth in the series, and it makes sense like that, providing a satisfying ending to the … Continue reading
Most British readers will have first encountered Posy Simmonds‘ work through her cartoons in newspapers and magazines. Starting her career in the Sun (‘when it was a left-wing paper, briefly’) she went on to satirise the mores of Guardian reading folk as they navigated Thatcher’s Britain, in the brilliantly inventive strips featuring Mrs Weber and … Continue reading
Having completed the first Pippi Lognstocking book in 1945, illustrator Ingrid Vang Nyman teamed up with her cousin Pipaluk Freuchen to create Ivik the Fatherless, later published in the UK as Eskimo Boy. Pipaluk was the half Inuit daughter of Ingrid’s uncle, the famous Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen (surely the inspiration for Pippi’s pirate father). … Continue reading
The Best Children’s Books of the year featured war, a walking house, boats (so many boats), rockets, a rockstar, an unfortunate ape, a lost magician, mermaids and more war. This is 2018. The Day War Came by Nicola Davies illustrated by Rebecca Cobb Hard to choose a favourite book from Nicola Davies in a year … Continue reading
Books that invite you to read along each day as Christmas approaches have long been a part of the publishing landscape. In 1955 Puffin released The Yuletide Cottage by John Harwood. The idea was that readers would push out a new piece every day until they had built their own Christmas house. It proved to be a … Continue reading
‘What was the point of Christmas? Magical stars in the sky, a baby born in a manger, a man who didn’t even exist riding a theoretical sleigh across the sky to not drop presents down your chimney. Christmas was the biggest annual collection of made-up daydreams in the whole world.’ Mouse is a boy who … Continue reading
Reviewing as many Christmas books as I have, you become attuned to some recurrent themes: anticipation, togetherness and charity pop up again and again. Often, among the joy, there’s a little melancholy. Less common is loneliness. Like Orlando Weeks’ The Gritterman, or Emma Chichester Clark’s Melrose and Croc, Marguerite’s Christmas deals with loneliness in a … Continue reading
It’s taken 21 days, but finally here’s a book that’s actually about Christmas, you know with the baby, the donkey and the rest of the gang. And as Chris Riddell says on the cover, Refuge is perhaps the most important. It begins with the familiar nativity tale, but told from the donkey’s point of view. … Continue reading
Plenty of children’s Christmas books major on the theme of family and togetherness, but far fewer cover the equally important flip side of loneliness experienced by many at this time of year. In Melrose and Croc: Together at Christmas we meet, for the first time, two of Emma Chichester Clark’s most popular characters as they … Continue reading
For some it’s The Snowman, others love It’s a Wonderful Life. Somebody, somewhere chooses Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups. In my house, Olive, the Other Reindeer is the sweetest Christmas TV treat. It all started when the children were small and getting up at ridiculous o’clock on Christmas Morning. Having weighed through TV specials … Continue reading
‘Finally Father Christmas was able to go to bed. He put on his pyjamas and was just climbing into bed when he saw something that made him gasp. At the end of his bed lay his sack. Father Christmas could see the shape of one present still inside it. Father Christmas pulled the present out … Continue reading
You know that bit in Raymond Briggs’ Father Christmas when the old grump is dragging his sack across the roofs of a terrace of houses. Some of the windows below him are radiating amazing warm light, suggesting the sort of excitement that Father Christmas will never be party to. Did you ever wonder what exactly … Continue reading
Following his involvement in an operatic adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are in 1979, Maurice Sendak was asked to design a new production of that famous festive chestnut, the Nutcracker. His immediate reaction was negative. ‘Who in the world needed another Nutcracker? The mandatory Christmas tree and Candy land sequences were enough to sink … Continue reading
There’s surely no human better qualified than Shirley Hughes to bring to life the breathless sense of anticipation felt by a couple of children in the run up to Christmas. I grew up with Lucy and Tom in the late Seventies and early Eighties, so revisiting the book now feels rather like looking at my … Continue reading
A favourite sub-genre of Christmas stories for children is the festive crime caper. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Home Alone and that episode of the Simpsons where Bart burns down the tree and blames it on burglars. Perhaps it plays into a sense of unease about a festival that allows a an old bearded man … Continue reading
I never had a cat growing up, which was a shame. But I didn’t really need one, I had Mog. Judith Kerr’s beloved tabby cat is that rare thing in children’s literature, an animal that doesn’t talk or embody all sorts of human characteristics. Instead she looks and behaves like a real animal. In Mog’s … Continue reading
Pat Hutchins was a picture book genius. Her debut, Rosie’s Walk, is rightly acknowledged as a classic and is still loved by small people everywhere. But little of her other work is that well known – or even in print – including the Silver Christmas Tree. Published in 1974, the same year that Hutchins won … Continue reading
Father Christmas is my all time favourite Christmas book. In fact it may even by my favourite ever book. It’s the only story I’ve consistently read throughout my life, a Christmas Eve reading ritual that provides a direct link to my childhood. I can still remember the excitement of holding this book and obsessing … Continue reading
‘The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops… All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that … Continue reading
Brian Wildsmith, came to prominence in the sixties as one of the great innovators in children’s picture books, combining words and imagery in striking new ways. He produced many Christmas books during his career including Mary and A Christmas Story, taking the traditional story of the Nativity and reinterpreted it in his visually arresting style. … Continue reading
‘There seems to be a good deal more to the world than the Christmas tree and the attic and the dust-bin. Anything at all might happen I suppose.’ One of the books on my slowly depleting list of betterment, I came to the Mouse and His Child with only a little knowledge: A fifty year … Continue reading
The Moomins aren’t a naturally Christmassy species. They prefer to spend their winters tucked behind an old boiler, or huddled together in their drawing room. You wouldn’t have thought the irascible Hemulens would have much truck with the celebration either, other than to give them something else to get cross about. But in The Fir … Continue reading
‘Jingle, jingle, jingle here. Jingle there. Jingle Christmas everywhere.’ Let’s step out of the cold and return to the New York Plaza hotel once more to spend Christmas with its most famous resident, six year old Eloise. If you’ve not met her before, she’s the part feral product of wealth and delegated parenting, who may … Continue reading
In 1957 Dr. Seuss was enjoying what Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys would describe as his ‘imperial phase’. The Cat in the Hat had just changed how children learn to read forever, and another masterpiece, Green Eggs and Ham was to follow. In between came his Christmas book, and it was every bit … Continue reading
‘One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it … Continue reading
One of the many pleasures of reading classic Christmas books is the way they open a window into the past in an especially vivid way. More than just present another idealised vision of Victorian festivities, the best of them can highlight the small details and forgotten language of Christmas’s past. As Piers Torday’s delightful stage … Continue reading
In a bid for Christmas equality, Posy Simmonds has now give us two versions of Scrooge as a woman, most recently in her graphic novel Cassandra Darke, which casts Dickens’ miser as a misanthropic art dealer. “Women really aren’t allowed to be total rotters,” she told the Guardian. “There certainly aren’t many like Scrooge, who … Continue reading
It’s the ‘Happy Birthday’ of children’s literature, a poem constructed from iron girders and designed to stay standing even as the ground shifts beneath it and the holiday it represents changes out of all recognition. The Night Before Christmas is the original and perhaps even the best Christmas book. It’s been interpreted by countless artists … Continue reading
Like a pop star working out a contract they didn’t understand when they signed, because they were too busy slurping down Capri Sun to realise what they were letting themselves in for, I find myself, after six grueling years in the game, working on the inevitable Greatest Hits compilation. The twenty four best ever Christmas … Continue reading
She’s mastered the strip cartoon, broken ground with her graphic novels and taken picture books to the Oscars, but one place Posy Simmonds’ illustration hasn’t been seen much is in spot illustration for children’s novels. The reason for this may be that in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Captain Hook Affair (1979), she got to draw all … Continue reading
You know you’re in for a treat when a book comes with a glossary that consists almost entirely of new and delicious sounding food. In the House With Chicken Legs, Sophie Anderson offers up many delights Beghrir: ‘a spongy pancake soaked in honey’, Chak-chak: ‘deep fried balls of dough, drenched in honey and left to … Continue reading
The world of children’s books loves a ‘golden age’ and so do I. According to various experts there have been at least three, with most agreeing on the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century (from Alice to Pooh) as the first. Critics including Imogen Russell Williams and Amanda Craig have said we are living … Continue reading
I’m not much of a beach reader. It’s hard to get as comfortable as I need to really lose myself in a good book. There’s no perfect position. If I lean on one elbow, the book flaps away in the other hand as the entire right side of my body slowly goes to sleep. Lie … Continue reading
‘An ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.’ The moment Maurice Sendak’s wolfish hero escapes the confines of his bedroom prison and into the world, there is a … Continue reading
A wordless appreciation of Shaun Tan’s unique fantasy about being a stranger in a very strange land. Continue reading
‘I can remember very clearly, even now, what it was like when we climbed over the wall into the garden of the big house. We knew we weren’t supposed to… but we were on the lookout for adventure.’ A boy and a girl escape the boredom of their aunt’s house and plunge deep into a … Continue reading
It’s ten years since a great wave of dystopian fiction for young adults broke with the publication of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. During that time we’ve become accustomed to grim visions of the near future, a trend that has cooled a little of late, possibly because we now find ourselves living through one. So … Continue reading
One of the great strengths of books about boats is their ability to show human drama on the largest of all possible canvases, whilst simultaneously focussing on the tiniest details of life at sea. Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill turns this dual function into an art form. This is the story of Ernest Shackleton’s … Continue reading
A wordless review of Aaron Becker’s Caldecott award winning ‘magic crayon’ trilogy: Journey, Quest and Return. Continue reading
I confess that I’ve always harboured a little inverse snobbery about the work of the much lauded Michael Morpurgo. It dates back to an event by Mr Gum author Andy Stanton, who spent a considerable part of his act falling over and saying, ‘You don’t get this with Michael Morpurgo!’ What you did get, as … Continue reading
I always enjoy a sequel that begins with the admission that perhaps the happy ending of the original story might not have been so happy for everyone. It’s the bittersweet feeling that all readers experience when putting down a book they have thoroughly enjoyed. The Storm Whale certainly falls into this category. With the Storm … Continue reading
Pirates, shipwrecks, voyages into the unknown, floods and mysterious strangers. Boats provide a useful function in children’s books. Over the next few months I’ll be writing about my fifty favourite adventures about boats. From fantastical nautical epics to salty graphic yarns, we’ll see how these stories form a central strand of children’s literature, and also … Continue reading
‘It rained every day since Grandma arrived in London. Every single day. Not the nice sort of fat rain than makes gentle plopping noises on your rain hat, but the nasty thin sort that runs down your nose and the tops of your Wellington boots and makes your hair stick out all over the place.’ … Continue reading
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939) was the first book written and illustrated by Mervyn Peake, who went on to write Gormenghast. I’ve always been a bit in awe of Gormenghast, having started it on several occasions and been defeated each time. It’s the sort of book best read when locked in a tall tower … Continue reading
Petr Horáček has been quietly getting on with the job of being one of our most imaginative children’s book illustrators since he won the Books for Children Newcomer Award in 2001. He is often compared to his hero Eric Carle (see below), an accolade he doesn’t shy away from in books like Jonathan and Martha which … Continue reading
2017 was inevitably the year of Dust. Philip Pullman’s return to the world of His Dark Materials dominated the world of children’s books so completely that I’ve not quite been able to bring myself to read it yet. I think I’ll wait until the, ahem, dust has settled. In the meantime there were plenty of … Continue reading
One book more than any other is associated with Christmas: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Its ubiquity is probably the reason I’ve avoided it in these last six years of writing Advent posts. I assumed there was nothing new to say. Returning to A Christmas Carol this year I was surprised by just how … Continue reading
‘Since his parents couldn’t stop taking about Father Christmas, Julien had decided to pretend to believe in him for another year. So he had written a letter to ask for a present.’ Julien is getting to old for Father Christmas, or so he has been led to believe. But he’s not quite ready to let … Continue reading
Reviewing as many Christmas books as I have, you become attuned to some recurrent themes: anticipation, togetherness and charity pop up again and again. Often amongst the joy there’s a little melancholy. Less commonly there is loneliness. Like Orlando Weeks’ The Gritterman, Marguerite’s Christmas deals with loneliness in a fascinating way. Instead of the usual … Continue reading
One thing you might notice about many of these advent posts is their overwhelming whiteness. I’m not talking about an abundance of snow and ice, rather the skin colour of their protagonists. There are exceptions, like Jack Ezra Keats’ classic The Snowy Day or Lauren St John’s brilliant The Snow Angel, but for the most part it might … Continue reading
Hello and welcome to another special blog by me, Clara! We’ve read more Christmas books than we know what to do with this year, so I’m going to do a picture book roundup of some of the best ones. The books are Red and Lulu, Oliver Elephant and Morris Wants MORE! Book one is Oliver … Continue reading
The idea of a story created in front of our eyes, the ‘third wall’ removed and the artist’s pencil visible, is nothing new. In the 1950s Harold’s Purple Crayon and Looney Tunes cartoons like Duck Amuck both upended the conventions of their form. More recently we’ve seen the like of Allan Ahlberg’s Pencil and Kathryn … Continue reading
Crockett Johnson was a New York cartoonist and children’s book creator best remembered for his classic 1950s books about Harold and the Purple Crayon. These deceptively simple stories follow a small snub nosed child in a romper suit around a blank background which he brings to life with line drawings from his ever present purple … Continue reading
Scary stories have always been part and parcel of Christmas, from creepy characters like Belsnickel to M.R. James terrifying pupils with his ghost stories around a blazing fire. Ross Montgomery is the latest sick individual to try his hand at this dark art: ‘For me, horror and Christmas work perfectly together. There’s something indescribably creepy … Continue reading
‘Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person awake in the whole country. People might find that a lonely thought. Not me’ It’s Christmas Eve and snow is falling ‘thick as vicar’s dandruff.’ The Gritterman is about to set off in his battered ice cream van, chimes blaring Mr Softee’s Jingle as he spreads salt ‘mined … Continue reading
Stanley Lambchop, one of the more unusual heroes in children’s literature, first appeared in 1964 when he was flattened by a falling notice board in his slept. Flat Stanley saw him exploring the world from the unique perspective of someone who suddenly found themselves living a life in two dimensions. The original book was illustrated … Continue reading
Less violent than I might have hoped, Anthony McGowan and Chris Riddell’s I Killed Father Christmas begins instead with an argument about the economy. ‘I don’t care about poor children or the economy, I want a robot and a racing car, and a helicopter that really flies.’ Jo-Jo is dragged into his parents’ constant arguments … Continue reading
Earlier this year I spoke to Rosemary Sandberg, the former editor of Picture Lions, the paperback publisher that gave Puffin a run for their money in the 70s and 80s. Along with classics like Dogger and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Sandberg published a selection of Christmas favourites including Cops and Robbers and Mog’s Christmas. … Continue reading
If anyone has helped shape the look of children’s books over the last couple of years it’s Karl James Mountfield. His covers and illustrations for books including M.G. Leonard’s Beetle Queen, Jennifer Bell’s the Uncommoners and Katherine Woodfine’s Sinclair Mysteries have all leapt off the bookshelves and into the bestseller’s lists. Now Mountford has teamed … Continue reading
December 1986. It’s the run up to Christmas and I have become obsessed by the BBC television adaption of John Masefield’s Box of Delights. It’s perfect in every way, from the twinkly rendition of the third movement of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s A Carol Symphony, to the snowy old English setting that melts into glorious effects laden high … Continue reading
Chirri and Chirra are two identical Japanese children who live in a hut on the edge of a forest. Each of their adventures sees them set off on their bicycles for an adventure in the natural world. In the Snowy Day the children are even more rosy cheeked than normal, as they ignore the unsuitable … Continue reading
‘The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories often feature miracles.’ The Lump of Coal, like Lemony Snicket’s other holiday book, The Latke Who Couldn’t … Continue reading
I could fill this entire Advent calendar with great Christmas books by Roger Duvoisin – in fact I pretty much have, here, here and here – but this year let’s look at his most garlandad title, Bright Snow, White Snow which he won the Caldecott Medal in 1948. One of the key practitioners of American … Continue reading
A combination seemingly put together to cater specifically for my tastes, One Christmas Wish brings together the author of one of my books of the year (Katherine Rundell’s The Explorer) with the artist behind one of the best Christmas picture books of recent years (Emily Sutton’s The Christmas Eve Tree). Thankfully they don’t disappoint. ‘It was … Continue reading
Not long after I moved to Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, I was in the local pub for some Christmas drinks. The establishment had recently been tastefully redecorated to suit people like me, all traces of its long history as a rough locals’ boozer expunged. Halfway through the evening, a gang of bizarrely dressed men … Continue reading
There’s a little way to go yet, but I’m going to put my neck out and say that Lauren St John’s new novel is the best book of the season, and one of the highlights of the year. The Snow Angel begins a little like Katherine Rundell’s debut The Girl Savage which I read at … Continue reading
There’s a lovely homespun innocence to the early Mr Men books, a sense that the stories have been made up on the spot, with illustrations quickly blocked out in felt tips, then on to the next one. Famously Roger Hargreaves began writing the stories down after his son Adam asked what a tickle looked like. … Continue reading
This is a preposterous book! Firstly, without giving too much away, a tree shouldn’t be so big it reaches someone’s ceiling. Think about measuring the height of the room first. Don’t get me wrong I love Christmas but there’s a limit to how Christmassy you can get with your tree especially the height! Mr Willowby’s … Continue reading
Two short-ish winter tales by the historical children’s novelist and self-confessed snow obsessive, Emma Carroll, who transports readers to a late 19th century frost fair and a family mystery on the streets of a Victorian town near Bath. Carroll’s debut novel Frost Hollow Hall was a superbly creepy winter ghost story, and in the Snow Sister … Continue reading
The late 1960s saw a creative reawakening of the British folk tradition, in music, film and literature it was the earthy flip-side to the gloss of the swinging sixties pop culture. Children’s books proved a fertile ground for the old myths and legends and powerfully showed how they are never to deeply hidden from the … Continue reading
I thought I might be scraping the bottom of Santa’s sack by now, but after six years of writing about books for Advent there are still more than I can cope with. 2017 has been a bumper year for new Christmas and winter themed releases, and I’ll be sharing the best of those throughout December … Continue reading
I began homeschooling my daughter this year, escaping the stress of SATs test madness of year 6. It’s not something we ever planned to do, and it is by turns exhilarating and overwhelming. So it’s been good to listen to the advice of the new Children’s Laureate, Lauren Child, who advocates more gazing out of … Continue reading
Alexis Deacon is perhaps the most significant creator of illustrated children’s books to come out of England in the early part of the twenty first century. ‘Not Since Mervyn Peake has there been an illustrator of such unique vision,’ says Professor Martin Salisbury. Continue reading
Roald Dahl used to talk with some pride about what he called his ‘child power’. He couldn’t move objects with his mind like Matilda or wave a vengeful magic finger, no. What he believed he could do, according to biographer Jeremy Treglown, was ‘walk into any house in Europe or the USA and if there … Continue reading
As the literary world awaits the Book of Dust, the much anticipated prequel to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the Comic Book Club this month looks to the return of one of his less well known characters, John Blake. Serialised over the last year in the Phoenix comic, the Adventures of John Blake follows the … Continue reading
In 1959 Shirley was approached by the publishers Victor Gollancz to create her first picture book, something she’d long been considering after years of illustrating other people’s work. ‘I went back to an idea I had worked on years before of a very simple book about two small children going through an ordinary day. There were, surprisingly, not many of them around in those days.’ Continue reading
Reading fiction is a peculiar experience. If you allow yourself to jump into a story and get caught in the current of letters, words and paragraphs it can become all consuming. At other times external stimuli, like a smell or the place you are reading seep into the book. As a compulsive listener of music, songs and stories have long been happy companions.
‘Fictional food’s not reliable,’ says Alexei, a character from Katherine Rundell’s third children’s novel The Wolf Wilder. This incorrect assertion is something Rundell disproves again and again in her delicious books. ‘I think food grounds a story: gives realism to the maddest plot, gives breathing space to the wildest action, brings comfort and humanity to … Continue reading
Early on in her picture book career, Helen Oxenbury teamed up with the dour Scots poet, musician and humourist Ivor Cutler. Perhaps best known today as the bus conductor in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, Cutler had carved out a unique position for himself in the 1960s as a cult entertainer for the Goons generation. … Continue reading
Whenever anyone asks me to recommend a book for their baby, there is one that immediately springs to mind. Ahead of the Bear Hunt, the very Hungry Catterpillar and even Rosie’s Walk comes So Much! Trish Cooke’s tale of a young mum and her baby’s seemingly ordinary day begins in a pleasingly low key manner: … Continue reading
Few people have contributed as much to children’s books as Helen Oxenbury. Best known for illustrating Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, she has also won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice (most recently for her wistful, contemporary take on Alice in Wonderland) and pioneered (arguably invented) picture board books for babies. Tiny Tim … Continue reading
Last week saw the 50th anniversary of the hugely influential Puffin Club, the children’s book group that brought a generation of readers together with each other and their favourite authors. By coincidence I had arranged an interview that day with the woman who was responsible for many of the practical and creative aspects of the … Continue reading
In January the comic book club met to discuss a reissue of Misty, a British girl’s horror anthology which ran from the late 70s through to the early 80s. It was launched specifically as a girl’s equivalent to 2000 AD, employing some of the sci-fi comic’s best creatives including Pat Mills who provides one of … Continue reading
One off the most visually striking picture books of 2016, Robert Hunter’s adaptation of Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson, not only illustrated a much loved poem, but like all good picture books added an entire new dimension. Hunter uses a combination of digital and hand drawn techniques in his work, creating a perfect … Continue reading
In my recent review of Laura Carlin’s Ceramics I was remided of an exhibition curated by the then Children’s Laureate Quentin Blake at the National gallery in 2001. Tell me a Picture placed fine art next to the work of some of the world’s greatest illustrators – an unusual concept even today, and one which came … Continue reading
One of my favourite ever exhibitions was curated by Quentin Blake at the National Gallery in 2001. Entitled Tell me a Picture, the idea was to take one work of art for every letter of the alphabet, which visitors were then invited to ‘read’. As well as introducing me to artists including Lisbeth Zwerger and Roberto … Continue reading
Another end of year list, but mine’s much later than everybody else’s, so that’s alright! What a bumper year it’s been, and what a thankless task it is to try and select ten titles from across the world of children’s comics, picture books and novels. So high was the quality that I’ve had to leave out incredible, … Continue reading
As if I didn’t have enough blooming work to do, I’ve been asked by the man at tygertale.com to do something called a blog post. At first I thought he wanted me to read my letters on the lavvy, but apparently it’s to do with the internet.
Guest post by Father Christmas. Continue reading
A small mystery for you: Why did Maurice Sendak never produce a Christmas book? A dislike of the season perhaps, or possibly because of his Jewish background? The latter seems unlikely as he said in 2003 that ‘religion made no sense to me’. Whatever the reason you just have to look at books like Chicken … Continue reading
I heard about this unusual book recently on BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Belief programme where the author Frank Cottrell-Boyce chose it as his favourite children’s book with a religious message, describing it as ‘an advent calendar within a book’. Its unique structure takes us day by day through December as a young Norwegian boy opens … Continue reading
We all love an unexpected corpse at Christmas. No one more than Robin Stevens, author of the Murder Most Unladylike series, which has reached the fifth book in its deadly run – Mistletoe and Murder. The Wells and Wong detective agency travel to Cambridge at Christmas where they are there to spend the holidays with … Continue reading
Mice play an important role in Christmas stories, going back to Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester, through the Church Mice at Christmas and the clockwork wanderings of Russell Hoban’s Mouse and his Child. To make it clear that this is a book about Christmas (and mice), The Happiest Man in the World comes with the … Continue reading
‘One day Jonas asked me, “Which do you like the best – the sun, the moon, or the stars?” I said that I liked them all, but maybe the stars just a little bit more because they shine so beautifully on Christmas night, and I love Christmas so much!’ Everything you need to know about … Continue reading
Following John Updike, another American cultural heavyweight weighs in with a piece of lightweight seasonal musing today, as anthropologist Margaret Mead records an ‘Interview with Santa Claus’ for what was to be her final publication before her death in 1978. ‘Do you have a few minutes for an interview? Children are asking so many … Continue reading
Michael Foreman’s very first picture book as both author and illustrator, the Perfect Present had originated as a story for the Christmas issue of the Observer magazine. This was the early 1960s, a time of innovation in children’s illustrated books which happily overlapped with the creation of newspaper Sunday supplements. It was an ideal launch … Continue reading
Brian Wildsmith, one of the great innovators in children’s picture books, died earlier this year. He was a true original who deserves to be remembered alongside the many other masters we lost in 2016. Wildsmith produced many Christmas books during his career including Mary and A Christmas Story, taking the traditional story of the Nativity … Continue reading
Although Beatrix Potter only wrote one classic Christmas story (the Tailor of Gloucester), she returned to the season in different ways throughout her career. A prodigious letter writer, Potter designed cards and sent fans seasonal missives from her characters, like this one from Peter Rabbit. ‘You know we do not move our tree; we leave … Continue reading
These advent pieces have grown into a year round obsession, and I’ve got into the habit of searching out Christmas books wherever I go. So it was on a March morning in Howarth, home of the Brontës and a place cast in perpetual winter, that I happened upon this sunniest of festive stories. Benjamin Chaud’s … Continue reading
‘What was the point of Christmas? Magical stars in the sky, a baby born in a manger, a man who didn’t even exist riding a theoretical sleigh across the sky to not drop presents down your chimney. Christmas was the biggest annual collection of made-up daydreams in the whole world.’ Mouse is a boy who … Continue reading
I picked up this telling of the Christmas story on the recommendation of Colin West, a brilliant children’s illustrator with exquisite taste to match. Illustrated by the great Harold Jones, a contemporary of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, Once in Royal David’s City is the follow up to his most successful work, (also with Kathleen … Continue reading
Fans of mid century children’s book illustration will find pretty much everything they’re looking for in Winter and the Children. Dapper costumes abound, with children decked in some glorious knitwear, and check out the town mayor dressed to impress in tweed, plus fours and a goatee. There’s an array of different architectural styles on display … Continue reading
'There seems to be a good deal more to the world than the Christmas tree and the attic and the dust-bin. Anything at all might happen I suppose.' One of the books on my slowly depleting list of betterment, I came to the Mouse and His Child with only a little knowledge: A fifty year … Continue reading
A rare example of a winter themed picture book set in an urban environment, the best known of which is Ezra Jack Keats’ similarly titled The Snowy Day. That book famously achieved distinction by casting black children but refused to make reference to their race. Here Komako Sakai does the same, except with rabbits. Sakai … Continue reading
Brambly Hedge is an English Arcadia suffused with the spirit of Beatrix Potter and Arthur Rackham. The Secret Staircase is the fifth story in the series, and the second to feature a winter setting. Jill Barklem’s work is famously intricate and impressively well researched. She spent five years looking at the landscape around her home … Continue reading
A Santa book for our times, Christmas in July is the torrid tale of a year in which Saint Nick loses his pants to a rich, selfish New York businessman called Rump. ‘Who do you think I am?’ Rump fumed. ‘Santa Claus?’ ‘But I’m Santa,’ said Santa. ‘And those are my pants!’ ‘You’re a bum!’ … Continue reading
Pull Frank Cottrell Boyce’s debut off the shelf and there’s not much to distinguish it as a ‘Christmas book’, the cover is dominated by pleasant blue sky and it’s only the presence of a rather careworn Nativity Donkey that suggests we’re about to enter festive territory. But Millions is one the great contemporary Christmas stories, … Continue reading
