Festive crackers for all the family
Treat young readers to the lasting gift of a good book this Christmas, with a little help from EMMA LEE-POTTER and CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE
PICTURE BOOKS
Julia some Donaldsonof the nation’s has best-lovedwritten picture Gruffalo SPINDERELLAbooksand Stick including Man. The (Egmont, £6.99), a footballsmall spider,but strugglesloves flies with and numbers.the goals scored Determinedby the to family count footballhelp of her team, hairy she godmother.enlists the also Julia enjoy Donaldson fans will A OF TREASURYSONGS (Macmillan Children’s, £14.99) which includes a CD of 23 songs. David Walliams is on top form in THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY SCHOOL! (HarperCollins, £12.99), the story of a python called Penelope who endears herself to everyone on Bring Your Pet To School Day. Well, everyone except the ultra-strict headmistress…
Beatrix Potter wrote THE TALE OF KITTY-IN-BOOTS (Warne, £12.99) in 1914 but never illustrated it. So Quentin Blake has stepped into the breach with this story of a cat that gets more than she bargained for during a night out hunting.
In the eyepoppingly colourful ODD DOG OUT by Rob Biddulph (HarperCollins Children’s, £12.99), a sausage dog learns the joys of standing out from the crowd. Pre-schoolers will giggle at THE QUEEN’S PRESENT by Steve Antony (Hodder Children’s, £11.99), a festive tale about the Queen’s quest to find the perfect Christmas presents for her great-grandchildren. Stunning to look at and lots of fun.
An elegant tribute to the joy and escapism of books, grown-up bookworms will love sharing A CHILD OF BOOKS by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston (Walker Books, £12.99) with their little loved ones. SNOWFLAKE IN MY POCKET (Walker Books, £6.99) features a wise old bear and an excitable young squirrel who has never seen snow before.
Rachel Bright’s words and Yu Rong’s illustrations bring the magic of friendship to life.
Designer Lisa Stickley has worked with scores of illustrious names from Paul Smith to Burberry. HANDSTAND (Pavilion Books, £9.99) is the quirky tale of a little girl who loves turning upside down. FIVE TO NINE-YEAR-OLDS Half storybook, half cookbook, NADIYA’S BAKE ME A STORY (Hodder Children’s, £14.99) by Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain includes 15 stories and a host of easy-tofollow recipes for young chefs.
Author Liz Pichon says her Tom Gates stories are exactly the sort of books she’d like to have read as a child. TOM GATES: DOGZOMBIES RULE (FOR NOW) (Scholastic, £10.99) is the story of Tom’s plan to make his band the best “in the whole wide world”, written in a chatty style with cartoons, doodles and jokes.
Brainy and inquisitive, the heroine of rhyming story ADA TWIST, SCIENTIST by Andrea Beaty (Abrams, £10.99)
is younga wonderfulgirls. role model for AND MichaelTHE GHOST Morpurgo’s KING THE FOX (HarperCollins, £9.99)
of a family of football-madis the story foxes. Ideal for young footie fans, it was inspired by the discovery of Richard III’s remains in a Leicester car park and Leicester City winning the 2016 Premier League.
In THERE MAY BE A CASTLE by Piers Torday (Quercus, £12.99), Mouse Mallory and his family are off to visit his grandparents when the car skids in the snow. Mouse wakes up in a magical world complete with a full-sized version of his beloved toy horse. Be warned: the ending is very sad.
Keep clever kids quiet for hours with Daniel Sanchez Limon’s COLOSSAL CREATURE COUNT (Buster Books, £9.99). They can tot up the exotic creatures on intricately illustrated pages in a kind of Where’s Wally? for budding nature lovers. NINE PLUS TV presenter Clare Balding’s THE RACEHORSE WHO WOULDN’T GALLOP (Puffin, £10.99) will inspire girls to aim high.
Ten-year-old Charlie Bass accidentally buys a racehorse at a rock-bottom price but the horse is cheap because he refuses to gallop and won’t leave his stable without his best friend, a naughty palomino. Uplifting and funny. Former children’s laureate Jacqueline Wilson is second to none in the readability stakes. CLOVER MOON (Doubleday, £12.99) follows a spirited Victorian girl who runs away from her cruel stepmother and finds herself at a school for destitute girls in London’s West End. A heartwarming story with fascinating historical detail.
When schoolboy Tom is hit on the head by a cricket ball, he’s admitted to an antiquated London hospital complete with an evil matron and a creepy porter. In David Walliams’s bighearted THE MIDNIGHT GANG (HarperCollins, £12.99), Tom and his fellow patients discover that appearances can deceive and dreams can come true in the unlikeliest of places.
Christmas would simply not be
Christmas without a new Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. In DOUBLE DOWN (Puffin, £12.99), the 11th book in Jeff Kinney’s megaselling series, hapless Greg Heffley hits on the idea of making a scary movie. But as always in Greg’s life, nothing goes according to plan.
Cazalet Chronicles author Elizabeth Jane Howard completed THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF FREDDIE WHITEMOUSE (Mantle, £9.99) before she died in 2014. This witty tale in a beautiful hardback edition follows Freddie, a reluctant mouse granted his wish of becoming a more exciting animal. TWELVE PLUS GONE WILD (Hodder Children’s, £9.99) is the third in Robert Muchamore’s pacy Rock War series, charting the progress of three teenagers who are desperate to make it big in the hard-nosed music world. Cecelia Ahern has written 14 bestselling novels and FLAWED (HarperCollins, £7.99) is her thought-provoking debut novel for teenagers, depicting a society where perfection is paramount and flaws are punished. Zoe Sugg – better known as Zoella – has more than 10 million YouTube subscribers, a range of beauty products and three novels to her name. GIRL ONLINE: GOING SOLO (Penguin, £12.99) continues the story of Brighton teenager Penny whose blog covers everything from panic attacks and online bullying to friendship and love. In EDEN SUMMER by Liz Flanagan (David Fickling Books, £10.99), Jess’s best friend Eden has gone missing and Jess realises she doesn’t know her as well as she thought. Jess and
Eden’s boyfriend Liam vow to uncover the truth behind her disappearance in this powerful, thrilling debut about love and loss.
Teens gripped by James Dashner’s edge-of-the-seat Maze Runner series will enjoy THE FEVER CODE (Chicken House, £12.99). In this prequel to Dashner’s dystopian saga inspired by Lord Of The Flies and Lost, the world has been devastated by fire, plague and fever.
As violence rages, a young boy with the power to change everything emerges from the chaos. Spellbinding but not for the timid. Holly Bourne’s …AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR? (Usborne, £9.99) is another winner for teenage girls. The fourth of Bourne’s Spinster Club series captures teenage life from friends and feminism to boyfriends.
Set in the run up to New Year’s Eve, the tale of three pals on the cusp of adulthood is honest, comic and compelling.
FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY Harryto receive Potter the fans screenplaywill be thrilledof JK Rowling’sAND WHERE FANTASTICTO FIND BEASTSTHEM (Little, Brown, £16.99) in their stockings. This epic story charts the adventures of Newt Scamander whose magical case goes astray and his extraordinary creatures escape.
Look out too for Emma Chichester Clark’s THE PLUMDOG PATH TO PERFECTION (Jonathan Cape, £8.99). With quirky, playful illustrations, she offers snippets of doggy wisdom to guide young and old readers through life’s peaks and troughs.
Still seeking inspiration? Don’t miss THE STORY CURE: AN A-Z OF BOOKS TO KEEP CHILDREN HAPPY, HEALTHY AND WISE by Susan Elderkin and Ella Berthoud (Canongate, £17.99). This suggests bookish solutions to youthful problems at any age, from bereavement (A Greyhound Of A Girl by Roddy Doyle) to bullying (It Was A Dark And Stormy Night by Allan Ahlberg).