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Children’s Christmas books: the best seasonal stories this year

Festive reads from Mel Taylor-Bessent, Kieran Crowley, Siobhán Parkinson and more

Evie’s Christmas Wishes, by Siobhán Parkinson, is a charming Christmas tale

Sara Keating's face
Sara Keating
Wed Dec 15 2021 - 06:00

Christmas is coming and the Carroll family are ready. It is only September but the fake snow has been scattered, the fairy lights have been lit and the smell of gingerbread permeates the rooms of their new house on Sleigh Ride Avenue. After years of homeschooling, Holly has just started at the local primary and is determined to spread cheer throughout the school. The other pupils, however, are not receptive to her “treeific, festabulous, christmariffic” charm.

Mel Taylor-Bessent's seasonal story is saturated with festive fun. Highlights include the family's singular inventions designed to make their home even more Christmassy – tinsel tush toilet paper, a jinglyjanglingy Christmaloo – and their impermeable gleeful goodwill. Underneath the baubles, however, this is also a story about fitting in. The Christmas Carrolls (Farshore, £7.99, 7+) is the perfect book – and perhaps the perfect antidote – for children who wish it was Christmas every day.

Mel Taylor-Bessent’s seasonal story, The Christmas Carrolls, is saturated with festive fun

Aisling and Joe, the brother and sister stars of Kieran Crowley's The Santa List (Scholastic, £6.99, 8+) would love if it was Christmas every day, but they will settle for December 25th, if their horrid army-trained babysitter Mrs Grough will give them even that. After one prank too many, she has written to Santa telling him not to bring gifts to the siblings and they are devastated. When they enlist the school bully, Victor Loozer, to help, things get even worse, not just for them but for the whole town of Mallow, unless they find a way to win Christmas back.

Crowley’s pacy plot doesn’t sacrifice character and in Mrs Grough, we find a particularly memorable villain, which James Lancett’s black and white pencil sketches capture perfectly. One to read before Christmas Eve.

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The eponymous star of Evie's Christmas Wishes (Little Island, £13.99, 3+) cannot wait for Christmas Eve. She has many hopes for the season, and some of them are fulfilled, but the best presents are surprises, as she discovers on December 24th when her uncle arrives with his new baby. Siobhán Parkinson's short sentences tap into the simple desires of children, where shared family rituals and school traditions are more important than material things. Shannon Bergin offers richly detailed scenes in warm colours and expressive characters with big eyes and smiles that draw little eyes immediately. A charming Christmas tale.

For very young readers, Jonathan Emmett's fold-out, lift-the-flap picture book Christmas Street (Nosy Crow, £14.99, 0+) is a feast for the ears and eyes. A simple alphabet rhyme brings us through the key traditions of the season, while illustrator Ingela P Arrhenius gives us delightful detail and quirky animal characters to follow from page to page. Bonus: the concertina-style book unfolds to provide a festive frieze that can be used as a backdrop to small-world play or to decorate a bedroom.

In Emma Carroll's short chapter book A Night at the Frost Fair (Simon and Schuster, £10.99, 5+), a young girl finds herself transported back to Christmas past, where an encounter with a boy holds the key to connecting with her ailing grandmother. Maya is on the way home after helping to move her grandmother into a care home. Divesting herself of her belongings, she gives Maya a piece of ancient gingerbread, and Maya's time-travelling journey takes her back to its source. The watercolour illustrations by Sam Usher are full of movement and have a Quentin Blake feel, while the short chapters and larger text make this a great investment for a newly independent reader.

Frindleswylde by Natalia and Lauren O'Hara (Walker Books, £12.99, 5+) is a long-form picture book that will also appeal to newly independent readers, though parents will be so captivated by Lauren O'Hara's illustrations that they may insist on reading it aloud. Frindleswylde is a shapeshifting frost boy who sneaks into Cora's granny's house when she is out collecting wood, and tricks the young girl into leaving. Fridnsewylde promises Cora her freedom if she can complete three impossible tasks. Luckily, Cora has a stork on her side to help her thaw the mystery, though the happy ending is a long time coming. This is an original modern fairytale that reads like a traditional classic.

Christmas is always a great time to get your children interested in classic children's literature. PJ Lynch's new version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (Walker, £12.99, 3+) features glorious full-page illustrations in Lynch's trademark washed blue palette to accompany Clement C Moore's seasonal poem. Eva Ibbotson's Journey To The River Sea (Macmillan, £16.99, 10+) is 20 years old this year, and a lush new hardback edition makes the Amazonian adventure an even more attractive proposition. Finally, Once There Was a Bear: Tales of Before It All Began (Farshore, £14.99, 5+) breathes new life into Winnie the Pooh. Jane Riordan offers a new collection of stories based on AA Milne's original characters, with nostalgic illustrations from Mark Burgess.