A low-key family Christmas is in the offering until all the 'rellies' invite themselves to Lottie Brooks’ house. Lottie loves presents and the festive season but will she be disappointed this year? What about the strain it will be on her poor mum – the family workhorse. Will Lottie Brooks’ new diary, Volume 6 in this hilarious epistolary series, prove her mettle?
Like most of Lottie’s close friendship group, the popular tween queen is obliged to hold her entire family in contempt for their corny Christmas traditions like “Elf on the Shelf” and her siblings embarrassing smells and gaffs. When her aunts and uncles arrive with 3yr old cousin, Frankie, exhibiting dark behaviours, she has bigger worries, like what gift to buy her classmate for 'secret santa' or her failure to inform her family that she has inadvertently invited an entire French family to Christmas dinner. Despite the allure of handsome Antoine (her new love interest), she is unable to rescind the Christmas holiday offer due to their language barrier. Does she prefer good old Daniel afterall? What a mess!
Katie Kirby’s final book narrated by Lottie Brooks reads like a multimodal diary including dates, times, text messages, thought balloons, lists - even stick figure embellishments. The negative spaces for easy reading, and the quirky hilarious characters make this a quickly digested chapter book to add to the reading log.
Baby Bella shouting 'BUM' in public and Toby convincing Lottie that she had drunk his wee – thankfully a sibling prank, may take the shine off two weeks of no school! But Christmastime for Lottie is guaranteed her most chaotic and amusing diary to complete the series: The extremely embarrassing life, The catastrophic friendship fails, The mega complicated crushes, The totally disastrous school trip and The majorly awkward BFF dramas. Readers particularly 9-13yrs, anybody with a family really, will find this chaotic Christmas instantly relatable.
Elvin Melvin and Emma Memma are getting ready for Christmas. The pair appears throughout the book, signing significant words for children to learn and practise: Christmas, lights, look, friends and where. Each of these words is displayed in the book, showcasing the customs and rituals of this important time in kids’ lives. So we see a Christmas tree, lights, baubles, reindeer, tree decorations, and this book weaves a story around the tree with Emma and Elvin as they seek out their friends and their displays.
Christmas lights are going up all over the town. Everything is sparkling now that the sun has gone down. Emma and Melvin invite the readers to see what is close by. In the twinkling lights they will be able to find BB Butterfly. They all get into a little colourful car to see what else they can find. They will see many many shapes of different Christmas lights, and amongst them a kangaroo hops along. The Butterfly bus keeps going, and is there to welcome a friend who has arrived from a different town. And Waffles the Wombat greets them as well. Emma asks him where his Christmas lights are.
He looks up into the night sky, and tells them that his lights are there every night for all to see. They all sit together on the hillside, watching the night display, waiting for Christmas.
Younger readers will enjoy this journey through Emma Memma’s town with her friends, searching out the images of Christmas and learning some signs as they read.
Emma Memma’s infectious illustrations will bring joy to the readers, as they too celebrate Christmas and wait impatiently for the day to come around. While each section of the town is decorated, it is a neat ploy to have the group look at the stars, a nightly show of bright twinkling lights.
Waiting for Santa by Lucy Cochran & Heidi McKinnon
Albert Street Books, 2024. ISBN: 9781760526719. (Age:3+) Recommended.
The letters have been written, Ren and Harry have made lists of things they want, Christmas is in the air and Mum and Dad take the children to the store to see Santa. Moloko the cat is in Harry’s backpack. The family joins the queue, and the children see the sign telling them that they have 7000 elf steps to go. The children are dismayed at the length of the queue, wondering if Santa is really there. Harry lets Moloko go in search of Santa. Mayhem is sure to happen.
Moloko leaps through the lattes, crashes through the crockery, and bounds through the books. At last, he makes it to the very top of the store to see Santa arriving in his sleigh. Happily, the children come down the escalator with Santa and find their parents unsure of where they are. All ends happily with Santa having his photo with the family. Another Christmas custom is accomplished.
A charming tale of the magic of Christas and the customs we all participate in at that time for the year, Waiting for Santa underlines the expectations children have in waiting for the special day. It always seems so far away, with weeks to go, with customs to be worked through. Santa is the special person they are waiting for, and again it seems an interminable length of time for him to arrive. In this cute tale Moloko the cat does a spectacular turn in hurrying Santa up.
The image of Santa’s legs sticking out of the chimney will amuse all readers, and the mayhem caused by the cat will tickle their funny bones. All the trappings of Christmas are shown, Christmas lights, Christmas tree, Santa and the sleigh, Father Christmas in the store, queueing for Father Christmas, wrapping paper, presents, candy cane, decorations, Christmas letters and lists. Kids will love reiterating the sort of customs their family has for Christmas and rejoice in the way Christmas is celebrated around the world.
Themes Christmas, Family, Christmas customs.
Fran Knight
Flora and Fern: Wonder in the woods by Sarah, Duchess of York. Illus. by Denise Hughes
New Frontier, 2024. ISBN: 9781923145085. (Age:3+) Recommended.
Fern and Flora aim to put on a Christmas party for all their friends. Fern is delighted as he knows Flora is an excellent organiser. They wander together through the woods, calling on friends and neighbours. Large bags are taken to collect the many things they need to make up decorations for their house. They find mistletoe and fir cones to add to their bag. They will drag these back to the house, ready to add to the house but find less in the bag than they thought. They check the bag and find a hole in the bottom. They find berries but some are a little hard to pick, so they carefully tug them from the bush, but waken the hedgehog that lies asleep beneath ht bush. A chase ensues. He chases them away and they race back home. The house is wonderfully decorated. On Christmas Day all their friends come to celebrate the day, marvelling at the decorations in the house. Many presents are shared and Baz brings along a plate of gingerbread biscuits.
A lovely cheery presentation of all the things that Christmas means for us all. Friends get together, food is shared, presents shared, rooms decorated. Looking at the colourful illustrations reveals all the images expected at Christmas: fir trees, decorations, presents, gingerbread biscuits, ivy, mistletoe, stars, and kids will have a great time seeing these on every page.
Being a northern hemisphere book, snow and cold are the order of the day, which younger readers will enjoy looking at each image filled page.
And classes will enjoy making the gingerbread biscuits from the recipe on the last page.
Dear Santa: I don’t need socks by Consuelo Fernandez Ortiz
Five Mile Press, 2023. ISBN: 9781922943477. (Age:3+) Highly recommended.
A wonderfully funny look at Christmas from two perspectives as Koala and his cousin, Olavi in Finland exchange Christmas cards. From there, every page shows how each will celebrate Christmas.
Koala tells us that he lives in a gumtree near Mallacoota, while Olavi lives in Lapland, a cold place of ice and snow.
In Australia Christmas can be spent in your bathers, but in Lapland, you had better rug up. As each page goes by new information is given about the Christmas celebrations in these two very different places. In Australia, Christmas is in summer, but in Lapland it is in mid winter. Other people may tuck into Christmas pudding and gingerbread men but Koala loves his gum leaves, even sharing his recipe for Christmas gum stew.
It is easy for Olavi to write to Santa, as he lives nearby. Koala’s letter asks that he does not leaves socks any more, because he has a collection and they are too warm to wear in Australia. In the north, gnomes help Santa with all the presents, but in Australia, the wombats lend a hand but they are not the best at wrapping presents.
The 24 hour darkness means that Olavi needs a clock to wake up on Christmas Day, whereas Koala wakes with the dawn.
Opening the presents they find that Olavi has been given the flip flops (thongs) and Koala the socks. So they make a decision to visit each other and swap their presents. This lovely book introduces Christmas to young readers, telling them that although people are separated by many miles, they celebrate in the same day with some differencse. Kids will love spotting the differences and wondering how people in another climate cope with Christmas in such a different climate. The illustrations are just wonderful, and young readers will love taking in the detail, laughing at the humour in each page and see how each little animal is coping with the lead up to Christmas.
I particularly love the front cover with the koala writing his letter to Santa by the light from the fireflies, and the headgear of Olavi and the wonderful end papers, with the lines of beautiful knitted socks. Lots of detail beckons the eyes to look further at each page, giving lots to discuss with the audience: a clothesline, the lift on koala’s gum tree, the lovely thin Father Christmas and his team of gnomes and the image of the two getting their mismatched presents.
This lovely different look at Christmas is sure to please.
Themes Christmas, Koalas, Humour, Celebrations.
Fran Knight
Giraffes Can't Dance: Jingle Bells by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees
Everyone knows that giraffes can't dance- that is unless you are Gerald!
Gerald was a tall giraffe Whose neck was long and slim, But his knees were awfully bandy And his legs were rather thin.
After being laughed at by the other animals who all seemed to manage their limbs well, in the iconic Giraffes Can't Dance, Gerald had lost his confidence until he had a conversation with a wise cricket who told him that sometimes you 'just need a different song'. And now, here he is, swaying his neck, shaking his tail and kicking his hooves as he grooves along to the cricket playing Jingle Bells on his violin and all the other animals join in.
Jingle Bells would have to be one of the first Christmas songs that many of our little ones learn and so they will delight in following both the text and the pictures in this new adventure for Gerald. Written to the tune of the traditional melody they can join in, predict the rhymes and just generally delight in its playfulness. But best of all, they will be able to join Gerald on the dance floor and move to the beat of their own drum.
Sheer delight.
Themes Christmas, Giraffes, Dancing.
Barbara Braxton
The brightest Christmas star by Laura Motherway. Illus. by Deb Hudson
It’s the star’s best time of the year, Christmas Eve, when it will shine as brightly as it can. It watches over the families doing things together as Australian families do. As each page is turned, we see children around Australia involved in the customs we all hold dear at this time of the year. The children on the farm have set up some storage bales of hay with fairy lights, children play cricket at the beach with their families, all kitted out in Christmas hats ready for a picnic. In the town’s main street, shops have fairy lights and banners, trees have lights festooned in the branches, people are buying their last-minute presents, children sing for passersby. At school, children make wrapping paper, at home, they bake Christmas biscuits, to wrap for presents, some presents are given to those who do not have one, and all the while the star twinkles overhead.
When the day is over, and all are in bed, the star watches, as it has done for generations. It shines brightly now for the passing reindeer and sleigh, as children dream of what tomorrow may being.
The illustrations show an array of Christmas customs and experiences. Bells, stars, presents, a Christmas tree, wrapping paper, Christmas lights, Christmas stockings, Christmas bon bons and so on, encouraging readers to share those things their family does at Christmas.
This is a happy verse story about the night sky in Australia at Christmas time which encourages children to predict rhyming words and say the lines along with the reader.
Themes Christmas, Family, Stars, Verse.
Fran Knight
On the hunt for Santa by Lesley Gibbes and Stephen Michael King
Working Title Press, 2024. ISBN: 9781922033109. (Age:3+)
One snowy day, three friends set out for the North Pole. Hare has a honey pot, Cat a candy cane and Pig has a plum pudding. They begin their perilous journey, tramping through ice and snow and over the crystal lake. They come to the Chasm Bridge guarded by a troll. But do they give up? No, they keep on going, Hare with the honey pot, Cat with a candy cane and Pig with a plum pudding. They bravely keep on their path, despite the sounds of the wolves they can hear in the snow.
Where could they be going questions the text, asking readers to think about the focus of their brave journey. They finally get to their destination, passing a sleigh with an empty sack, and a group of reindeer, quietly chewing their grass.
Readers by now will have worked out where the trio is headed and receive the news gladly. The very idea of Father Christmas is enough for kids to get excited, and in reading this story, they will think of another aspect of Father Christmas, the quiet time after the rush of delivering all the presents.
A wonderful sequel to Scary night sees three intrepid friends, setting out to deliver a happy Christmas Day to Santa after his work on Christmas Eve. Vibrant illustrations will keep eyes glued to the pages as they see the trek the animals make, disregarding their own safety to wish Santa a Happy Christmas.
Themes Father Christmas, Christmas, Animals, Journeys, Humour.
Fran Knight
Socks: A kid's Christmas Lament by JD McPherson and Anika Orrock
Walker Books, 2024. ISBN: 9781536237023. (Age:3+)
Christmas morning has dawned and while the family is still asleep, a little boy sneaks downstairs to peek at what is under the tree. He picks up a gift from his mother to his and gives it a shake, and, unable to resist, opens it. But...
This is the worst gift I ever got! It doesn't beep or buzz or bop or rattle in the box! Why'd they waste the paper on a lousy pair of SOCKS?
Where is the haunted pirate schooner? The pool-size trampoline? The laser sword, the Action Man, the bathtub submarine? Despite having been extra good and kind, even bribing Santa with money stapled to their Christmas letter, it seems socks are all that is under the tree this year!
This is definitely a Christmas story with a difference - both in theme and presentation - a print version of the song of the same name, and includes a QR code that allows the reader to listen as they read. But rather than just the audio of the original, this has visual interest with illustrations that depict the boy's frustrations perfectly, with a variety of techniques used that express his frustration and add depth to the words. Unlike the song though, this takes the story a few steps further and there is a happier ending than a grumpy, ungrateful kid.
It's Christmas and it's time to decorate the tree. But where is the star for the tip-top ? As they search, Spot himself goes missing. Where can he be?
It's over 45 years since English author Eric Hill noticed his toddler son was fascinated by lifting up a paper and peeking at the picture underneath and thus conceived this series of stories about a puppy in a lift-the-flap format, first published in 1980. Even though it is 10 years since his death in 2014, his stories are still being published and republished as their simplicity and interactivity continue to fascinate new waves of little people, because just as I introduced my little one to the stories way back then, so he did for his girls and now it won't be long before they share it with their children. Such is the power of stories that invite the reader to not only be an active participant in their reading but also be able to retell themselves the story without adult help.
If we draw on our knowledge of Cambourne's Conditions of Learning, then we know that one of the prime motivators of being a reader is the expectation that we will succeed and thus being able to tell yourself a story without adult intervention is very powerful. So as our little ones draw on what they already know about Christmas and put it together with the simple text, clear illustrations and the fun of discovery this one is a winner for sharing in these days as the anticipation grows.
In the bush Christmas always starts with a lucky dip from Mrs Roo's pouch and this year all the little animals have discovered musical instruments, perfect for tootling and banging and tinging as they march down to the beach for the Christmas party.
"I wish we had a Christmas tree," Little Wombat muses, and suddenly, after they have been rolling and jumping in the sand, they did. Not only that, there was Santa and a reindeer ... and a very clean beach.
Little Wombat and his friends are fast becoming a preschool favourite series as not only are the creatures familiar and seemingly the same age as they are, they do the sorts of things that little ones do while there is always a subtle message to gently absorb as they read - this one about being aware of how we treat our beaches. Despite being an Englishman living in England, Fuge's illustrations capture Little Wombat and those in his world perfectly with just the right blend of anatomical correctness and whimsy.
While our little ones are no doubt seeing the traditional pine tree being decorated for this festive season - whether it is real or fake - it is an opportunity to think about how else they could make a Christmas tree from what is around them. They might not have an echidna with a spiky back, but it only takes a little imagination... At the same time, older siblings might like to investigate why we have trees at all, as well as what inspired them to be decorated. From seemingly simple books can come lots of learning... this one is going in my to-keep collection.
Themes Wombats, Christmas.
Barbara Braxton
Christmas at Hogwarts by J.K. Rowling. Illus. by Ziyi Gao
Fans of the Harry Potter books will be thrilled to collect another book, this time a picture book celebrating Harry’s first Christmas at Hogwarts. The text is taken from Chapter Twelve of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, with plot spoilers omitted, and it is beautifully illustrated by Ziyi Gao. The enticing cover shows Christmas trees, decorations, candles, bonbons and the high windows of the Great Hall and immediately draws readers in, making them want to peruse the delight of Christmas at Hogwarts.
The book begins with the opening sentences of Chapter Twelve: “Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow.” Readers first catch a glimpse of Hogwarts through the eyes of a great white bird and then the warm glow of light in the Great Hall. After that they can follow Hagrid carrying a huge Christmas Tree and join Harry and Ron spearing food on a toasting fork and opening presents. Harry’s amazement at receiving an Invisibility Cloak that had belonged to his father is heartwarming. Gao’s colourful illustrations bring alive the expressions on the faces of all the friends and staff reminding readers of the joy of giving and receiving presents.
This book is perfect for a family to share at Christmas, an ideal present for lovers of the Harry Potter series and a gorgeous introduction to Hogwarts.
Themes Christmas, Harry Potter, Wizardry, Magic.
Pat Pledger
Snow Bunny's Christmas show by Rebecca Harry
Nosy Crow, 2024. ISBN: 9781805131076. (Age:2-5)
Snow Bunny and her friends Mouse, Fox and Bear, live in the forest, and as Christmas draws near, they decide to put on a show. As they build a stage, and put up lights and curtains, each thinks about what their act might be. Snow Bunny has ideas for each of them, but just as she begins to think of what she might do, the audience begins to arrive. There is no time for her to do anything but introduce the other performers.
At the end, while Mouse, Fox and Bear are receiving the accolades, Snow Bunny feels a bit left out but then...
As school concerts and other performances are in full swing, there are going to be those who are disappointed that they might not have the spotlight they desired, so this is an excellent (and original) opportunity to show them that it takes a team on the stage and behind it to put on a show, and one can't happen without the other. It's also a timely reminder to acknowledge the back-stage folk who work so hard as well as remembering that there are those who prefer to be back-stage and respecting those feelings. Ask me how I know...
Themes Christmas, Concerts.
Barbara Braxton
The Magic Faraway Tree: A Christmas adventure by Jacqueline Wilson
A second offering from Jacqueline Wilson that is inspired by the stories about the Magic Faraway tree written by Enid Blyton. This time the children – Milo, Mia and Birdy - who were introduced in the first book, stay at the cottage beside the Magic Faraway Tree in winter for a Christmas holiday. They soon find all their friends at the top of the tree and are excited to see new lands arrive each time they slip out of the cottage to visit the tree. They enjoy the Land of Sunshine where they play on the beach, swim with mermaids and have a lovely beach picnic. The land of the Frozen North presents some interesting experiences, such as meeting friendly bears, arctic foxes and running away from terrifying wolves, not to mention seeing Santa’s reindeer fly out of danger. Each land they visit presents new experiences and new challenges and the Land of Toys is so appropriate for this story set at Christmas time.
This book is perfect for reading as a bedtime chapter book for younger children as it uses simple language and contains a selection of small illustrations. The font is larger than most books this size making it ideal for young independent readers as well.
Crammed with 250+ pages of Christmas-themed jokes, riddles, (possibly unfactual) facts and tongue twisters this book is a must for joke book lovers over the holiday season. Approachable for young ones and actually not as terrible or annoying as the title makes out, this is a follow on title to Warning! These jokes will annoy everyone you know. Joke books are perfect to get reluctant readers engaging with text and the simple language and uncluttered format of this will keep them going. Is there a better way to get young ones reading, chatting and laughing together over the summer holidays than a new joke book all about their favourite time of the year?
