My children love Christmas and they love Christmas stories. I am a self-avowed charity book shop addict. The result is groaning shelves and a healthy supply of titles on all subjects, especially Christmas ones. In my attempt to restore some saneness to the situation, Christmas books only come out in December. They get read until the children are in a fever-pitch of Christmas mania and excitement, and go back in the loft in January.
Except this year, somehow two titles have snuck into the all-year-round pile. They are so beautiful I cannot bring myself to relegate them upstairs, and I keep buying copies to give to the children of friends as well. They are both lustrous and beautiful, true to the spirit of Christmas as a magical time. Brian Wildsmith is the author / illustrator and I think they would be a marvellous addition to any library – even in October. The Twelve Days of Christmas is a re-working of the traditional song, and the Christmas Story is a nativity tale.
One word of warning, there is a third Wildsmith Christmas title “the Christmas Journey”. Amazon suggests buying it together with the other two books. My children found it far too similar to A Christmas Story. In fact, it incensed them so much they made me give it away – and it is not often we are charity shop donaters, rather than purchasers.
