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
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
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
Together with Judith Kerr, Shirley Hughes is the person I look to when I want to be reminded of Christmas past. Lucy and Tom’s Christmas in particular feels rather like looking at my own childhood Christmases, laid out in lovely thick gouache. There have been several other wonderful additions to her festive cannon including a … Continue reading
Like many people I returned to reading children’s books as an adult, through J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. This inevitably lead me to Philip Pullman, and then a little later to a writer who I think deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines quartet showed just how mind expanding children’s … Continue reading
Christmas parties normally bring me out with a bad case of the bah-humbugs, but there’s one host whose gatherings I’d love to be invited to. Posy Simmonds, writer and illustrator of Tamara Drewe and The Chocolate Wedding, is a total genius when it comes to capturing the joy and frivolity of a fantastic bash in … Continue reading
