A Review By Tamsin

Down at the front, on a freezing Winter’s night in 1914, in the middle of the worst war that the world has known, two men stood and faced each other as in hope, not in war. In The Christmas Truce Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy gives us a lovely poem, inspired by this moment of humanity and hope at Christmas.

With much of the world still at war, this lovely little Christmas book offers a reminder of the moment when two trenches came together, shook hands, sang songs, swapped gifts, played football and found peace in no-man’s-land.

A delightfully illustrated book, sized for little hands to pull from Christmas stockings.

A Review By Keith Smith

We heard Frank talking about his new book at our Christmas Show. This takes place every year in the Banqueting Suite at Windsor Racecourse, and it is where we make our personal selections of what we are going to sell at Christmas. Frank’s talk was hilarious, and I decided as a result to read the book. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story revolves around the Tooting family who acquire a very old camper van and do it up. Unbeknownst to them the engine they put in the van was what was originally in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , and it soon takes control of their lives, driving and flying them all over the place in its own search for other parts of Chitty. But there are sinister forces at work too. When it comes to a car as special as Chitty, everybody wants a piece of her …

The story is an enticing one, we get to know and love all the family members, and we cheer the campervan/turbocharged car extraordinaire on. Great fun.

A Review By Tamsin

‘Give me your buns and your biscuits! Give me your chocolate éclairs!

For I am the Rat of the highway, and the Rat Thief never shares!’ Life is not safe for those who live alongside the highway, as the villainous Highway Rat gallops along, stealing food from the other animals. Clover from a rabbit; nuts from a squirrel – he even steals his own horse’s hay. The Highway Rat gets fatter and fatter, while the other animals struggle to find enough to eat. But he’s reckoned without one cunning little duck who to plans to teach him a lesson. Written by the authors of favorites like ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Room on the Broom’, The Smartest Giant in Town’ and ‘Zog’, in the usual, fabulous, rollicking rhyme.

Donaldson has based the rhythm of her poem on the famous Alfred Noyes poem, ‘The Highwayman’. Another clever, fun tale by Donaldson, completed by typically witty illustrations from Axel Scheffler. As we have come to expect from this partnership, this is clearly another classic in the making. Charming. As ever.

A Review By Tamsin
From the Caldecote Medal Winning creator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonder Struck once again takes its readers into an awe-inspiring world which is rich, complex and utterly wonderful. Playing with the weaving structure he developed for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Selznick introduces us to Rose and Ben, part narration part graphic novel, children separated by 50 years, but whose worlds are strangely entwined in a truly fearful symmetry. Selznick takes that final step in uniting artwork and prose – the pictures tell the story here, rather than tag along to provide light relief on the journey.

Rose and Ben both wish their lives were different. Rose is obsessed by the life of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook, and Ben wishes to be with the father he has never known. After two apparently chance discoveries, both children set out on separate quests. The novel weaves back and forth in time as the children try to find what they are missing.

From the dark days when the Puritans tried to abolish Christmas, to Christmas in the trenches when the British and Germans traded bullets for footballs, this title supplies Christmas facts the readers wanted to know.