“Winter Is Coming”: Favourite Books for Long, Dark Nights by Emma Barnes

Not for children!

The days are dark; night creeps in early; there is frost in the air. 

I'm not a fan of winter. (I always get that frisson of dread whenever the Starks declare “Winter is Coming” in George RR Martin's Game of Thrones.  And I don't live anywhere near any Wildings.) Partly that's because British winters are grey and damp, rather than snowy and crisp. But while the reality of crawling out of bed on a dreary, dismal morning doesn't grab me, winter in children's fiction is a different thing.

Snow. Woods. Wolves. A crackling fire. Stark leafless trees. Shadows everywhere. This I enjoy.

Real life adventure

Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood, in a log cabin in the deep forest of Wisconsin, always gave me the same winter glow. There really is no better winter read than The Little House in the Big Woods. (Ma, bundled up against the cold, whacking a bear that she thinks is a cow. Pa playing the violin during the long nights. Christmas, when Laura receives her beloved rag doll, Charlotte.)

Unless, that is, you prefer The Long Winter, where the township is trapped by blizzards, the train lines closed, the Ingalls family are using a coffee mill to grind out their last handfuls of wheat and slowly everyone begins to starve...

Classic Fantasy

That sense of threat is also there in The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Ostensibly it's the fantasy “Dark” that is the danger, but much of the menace comes from the weather itself: the snow that falls and falls, the numbing cold, the village community that is slowly being cut off so that finally everyone has to take refuge in the old manor house.

I've always felt that Susan Cooper must have read another winter classic, The Box of Delights, as a child – for there are all kinds of echoes, most of all in the particular blend of English landscape and history, magical threat and snowy weather. Who can help a shudder of anticipation on reading that cryptic warning “The wolves are running...”

Urban snowscapes

Yet winter doesn't have to be about deep woods and rural landscapes. As a very small child, I was transfixed by Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, which uses an urban setting to explore the feelings of fascination and wonder of a small child confronting something as amazing as SNOW. It's something about the simplicity and immediacy of this book that makes it so effective.

It brings home the fact that children's books still, often, ignore the urban landscape. The Snowy Day was, apparently, inspired by Keat's childhood neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. (It also has the distinction of being one of the first American children's books to feature a black lead character. That was in 1964. Decades later, diversity, or lack of it, is still a hot issue.)

Narnia

In general though, winter seems to be about magic, rather than real life, for children's authors. Maybe it's because it reasserts the power of nature – of snow, storms, the biting cold – in a way that makes us feel less sure of our human technology, more aware of the power of our natural surroundings. In the depths of winter, it is easier to believe in supernatural forces. Perhaps we feel less in control, more in touch with the past, more in need of help?

The excitement, magic and danger of winter is perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When spring comes, it marks the beginning of hope and the end of the dark magic. And yet CS Lewis draws every drop of excitement from his winter setting: the fun of sledges, the terror of wolves, the wonderful warmth of hot chocolate or of snuggling in a fur coat. (Even if you don't approve of fur coats, you can still enter into the Pevensies' enjoyment of them.)

 Fairytales

This link between winter and magic seems so strong that it even percolates into adult literature. Most mainstream adult fiction keeps its distance from the magical, but the bestselling The Snow Child combines the setting of Alaska and a pioneering couple determined to make a life there (almost Laura Ingalls Wilder in its way) with a traditional fairytale fable, when they meet a child who seems strangely at home in the icy landscape, and surely possessed of magical powers.

A Russian folk tale is the inspiration for the story, and is just one of those included in the classic collection Old Peter's Book of Tales by Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome.

The Snow Queen, the most wintery of fairytales, is still going strong of course.

 And in case anybody doubted the combined power of fairytales, princesses and snow, Frozen is a recent reminder of their continuing appeal to the child's imagination. (Visiting schools for World Book Day, I've met  dozens of little “Elsas” and “Anas”.)

My Winter Tale

illustration by Emma Chichester Clark

Wolves, forests and fairytales were all at the back of my mind when I wrote my book Wolfie. Even though it is a contemporary story (with a helping of fantasy), about a girl called Lucie, and her adventures at home and school, as winter closes in the atmosphere becomes mysterious and magical.

The feeling I aimed to create is brilliantly evoked in this illustration by Emma Chichester Clark.

New Titles

Its fascinating to see that even in these days of central heating and cars chauffeured by mum and dad, where bad weather might seem just a passing annoyance to children glued to screens, winter has maintained its magic charm. The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell and Frost Hollow Hall  by Emma Carroll are two recent books which use winter – and its motifs of snow, woods, magic and wolves - to work their magic.


 I'm planning to curl up with one or other of them when the long, dark nights draw in.

What is your favourite winter read?








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Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever. (Cover - Jamie Littler)
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
(Cover: Emma Chichester Clark)
"Funny, clever and satisfying..." Books for Keeps

Books About Flying - Heather Dyer

I appeared at the Biggest Book Show on Earth this week. The authors were each asked to speak for 15 minutes on ‘Why I Can’t Live Without Books’.

Me wearing the wings. Photo a selfie courtesy of Shoo Rayner, fellow writer and illustrator, on the left!

Books allow us to step into other people’s shoes, and see how it feels to live other people’s lives. Books help us to empathise. Books allow us to meet larger-than-life characters, go to unfamiliar places, and witness extraordinary events. And they allow us to experience things that would never be possible in our real lives – things like flying!

As a child, all my favourite books had some flying in them. One of the first was Enid Blyton’s wonderful The Wishing Chair. How thrilling it was to read about the wooden chair that grew wings whenever Mollie and Peter least expected it – and carried them off to fantastical places.

And who could forget that flight across Narnia on the back of the winged horse, Fledge, in The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis?

Then there was the flying carpet in Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. When the carpet grew threadbare and there was risk of falling through it, flying became even more exciting – and I cried when this book was finished.

But the most fantastical flying object must be the peach in Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. James harnesses hundreds of seagulls to lift the peach out of the water and fly it across the Atlantic.

Flying has found its way into most of my own books too – be it by magic carpet, wings – or more unusual vehicles, like Elinor’s bedroom in The Flying Bedroom. 

Clearly, I have not lost my longing to leave the ground. Who has? Flying is really about freedom - about being light, about being able to leave your worries on the ground and about gaining a whole new perspective on the world – rather like books themselves.  

The Best Place to Hide: Some Favourite Children's Books about Dens and Hiding Out - Emma Barnes

Last week I wrote about how camping out - in both reality and fiction - inspired my new book Wild Thing Goes Camping. Equally important, I realised, was the idea of dens and secret hiding places.

There’s something really powerful for a child about a den or a secret place. There’s all the fun of finding or building one. There’s also the thrill of having a place that nobody know about: a place totally under your control, where nobody messes with your stuff, which is totally private from the grown-ups.

I’d already used the idea once before in Sam and the Griswalds – where a tree-house in Sam’s garden provides an important refuge and meeting-place.

In Wild Thing Goes Camping, five-year-old Wild Thing disappears into the back garden with some of the clean laundry.  When big sister Kate, Gran and Dad go looking for her, they are rather taken aback when a head pops out of the ground at their feet.

"No need to shout," she said. 
It was a bit of a shock seeing my sister come out of nowhere like that.  "What are you doing down there?" I demanded.  "And... where is the rest of you?"
"In my new den, of course," said Wild Thing.  And she disappeared again, under the sheet.
Dad gave a roar of annoyance.  Then he knelt down and grabbed a corner of the sheet - and pulled.
Wild Thing gave a howl.  "Stop!" she bellowed. "That's my roof!"


It turns out Wild Thing has made a potato trench in the back garden into a den for herself and her worms. She makes a sheet into the roof and purloins Gran’s new handbag as a “worm house”.

Of course, Dad forbids her from building more den.  But like children before and since, Wild Thing is not about to give up her pursuit of a place of her own!

Here are some of my own favourite books with secret dens. They cover the entire age range: a secret space, after all, may be just as important to a teenager as it is to a small child making a den behind the sofa.

I’ve had to search hard, though, to think of recent examples. Is this because there are fewer forgotten and hidden places in today's intensely developed world?  Or because modern children have less freedom to explore outdoors?  Or perhaps because today’s children take refuge online – not in dens?

1) Sally’s Secret - by Shirley Hughes Classic picture book writer-illustator Shirley Hughes produced this wonderful story about a small girl making herself a house at the bottom of the garden. The joy is in the details – the doll’s tea set, the leaf plates, the tiny cakes. At the end she decides to share it, and invites the next door child to tea.

2) Tilly’s House – by Faith Jacques  A servant doll that runs away from a dolls’ house and creates her own home in a wooden crate in an abandoned green-house. Although about a doll, it taps into a child’s own desire to make a little place of their very own. The special pleasure of this story, again, lies in the very detailed illustrations, and in seeing how discarded and unwanted every day human objects (sponges, bottle tops, wrapping paper, an old glasses case) can be transformed into the furnishings for a doll. 

3) The Hollow Tree House -  by Enid Blyton Enid Blyton may not have been a great stylist. But her enormous popularity was not for nothing, and one of her strengths was her ability to hook-in to a child’s fantasies. It’s not surprising, then, that many of her books feature secret hide-outs. The Hollow Tree House is about two children who, with the help of a friend, run away from their abusive relatives and make their home in a huge, hollow tree in the woods.

4) The Magician’s Nephew - by C.S.Lewis  Sometimes a secret place may be the way into another world.  Polly has made a "smuggler's cave" in the attic of her terraced house. It is, of course, when she shows the attic to her friend Diggory that they travel too far along the rafters, stumble into Uncle Andrew’s study, and end up as part of an experiment which sends them out of this world, and eventually into Narnia…

5)  The Dare Game - by Jacqueline Wilson Jacqueline Wilson is a contemporary author who seems to have a direct line to a child's fantasies.  In this book, her most famous character, Tracy Beaker, bunks off from school and discovers an empty house.  It becomes a place where she can escape from her troubles, but also form new friendships.

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6) The Secret Hen House Theatre - by Helen Peters  This is a recent book, whose old-fashioned setting on a Sussex farm has not stopped it making a big splash.  Helen lives with her three siblings and widowed dad, whose long working day leaves little time for his children.  Then one day she stumbles upon a dillapidated old hen house.  For Helen, it represents not just the chance of creating her own space, but a way of fulfilling her dreams of being an actress...

7) Jenning’s Little Hut - by Anthony Buckeridge  Jennings and his boarding-school friends build their own shelters down by the pond.  These vary from Bromwich Major’s subterranean “elephant trap” with resident goldfish to Jennings and Darbishire’s own Ye Old Worlde Hutte with its periscope, duckboards, and front door mat made of bottle tops!

8) Peter’s Room - by Antonia Forest  In this neglected classic, Peter Marlow turns the loft above the coal shed into a hide-out, complete with stuffed hawk and antique pistols. This adult-free space then becomes the venue for a teenage fantasy game that gets dangerously out-of-hand.

9) The Hunger Games - by Suzanne Collins   Katniss and Gale have a secret shelter where they meet while poaching in the woods. Later, during the Games themselves, Katniss and Peetah take refuge in a cave by the river. For victims of an oppressive, authoritarian regime, the possibility of a space of their own is every bit as important as it is to younger children trying to dodge their parents.

Any suggestions for number 10? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emma's series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways) is published by Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.  It is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps

Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Why do we write about talking animals?

I'm feeling a little emotional, to be frank. I've spent the past eight years writing three books about a group of talking animals (The Last Wild trilogy), whom I've grown very fond of. Last week I sent the final book off to the printers. I won't be making the animals in it, or any others for that matter, talk again for the foreseeable future.

  

And, pausing before I blunder off into a whole new imaginative realm, I've been reflecting. Why do we do it? Why do we take these dignified, self respecting other species we share the planet with, and imbue them with often wildly mismatched human characteristics, psychology and dialogue? Why are those characters so perennially popular with younger children? Equally, why are they such a literary turn off for some, and many older readers?

 There are many answers to those questions, and they've changed as continuously as human behaviour. One argument is that in making animals talk and walk like us,  we seek to play out the mysteries of our deeper and more unknowable feelings. For children, growing slowly cognizant of more complex and challenging human emotions on the adult horizon, animal characters in books can be like a literary version of play therapy, safe proxies through which to navigate those feelings. (Perhaps that equally repels older or adult readers who have no desire for proxies, hungry for the authenticity of real human interaction.)

But that’s the young reader. What’s the appeal to the adult writer, seeking to put words in the mouths of mice? For me, I keep coming back to the haunting story of another writer and his far better-known talking animals.

In 1906, he was nine years old, known to all as ‘Jack’, and living in East Belfast, enjoying a quintessential turn of the century middle-class childhood. 

The Lewis family, 1906

His father Richard was a successful solicitor, and his mother Flora was the daughter of an Anglican priest. His elder brother Warren was away at boarding school in England, but when he was home for the holidays, the boys enjoyed long walks and cycle rides in the leafy suburbs. The spacious house might sound boring for children  - with what Jack later described as its “long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude” - but he and Warren happily filled it with imaginary worlds and games of their own, inspired by their father’s substantial library.

But 1906 was the year everything changed for Jack. Quite suddenly, his beloved mother passed away at an early age, from cancer.  The world he knew and loved, the idyll of his early childhood - had been changed forever.  And Jack’s response was to lose himself in one of the fictional worlds he and Warren - or Warnie - had created together.  A world he called ‘Animal Land’ - full of delightful characters such as this natty frog.

 In 1907, he wrote to Warnie at his school in England, describing in detail the story of one of Animal Land’s many kingdoms.

My dear Warnie

 …I am thinking of writeing a History of Mouse-land and I have even gon so far as to make up some of it, this is what I have made up.

Mouse-land had a very long stone-age during which time no great things tooke place it lasted from 55 BC to1212 and then king Bublich I began to reign, he was not a good king but he fought against yellow land. Bub II his son fought indai about the lantern act, died 1377 king Bunny came next.

Your loving

brother Jacks

Animal Land, which soon evolved into a universe known as “Boxen”, was a complex imagined world created by the two brothers, which blended animal fantasy with mediaeval romances popular at the time and contemporary colonial politics.  Crucially, it was conceived as a complete world - with its own rules, boundaries and belief systems.  In one story, Jack wrote :

"The ancheint [sic] Mice believed that at sun-set the sun cut a hole in the earth for itself."

Much later in his life, Jack, in his better known identity as C. S. Lewis - wrote in his partial autobiography, Surprised By Joy:

“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy, but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”

To a pair of young children dealing with their grief, and shortly, further displacement as Jack was sent to join his brother away at school in England - the history, lives and laws of some imaginary mice or frogs offered the one thing their upturned lives suddenly lacked - security.

It's too simplistic for me to dismiss Narnia, as some do, as a mythical paradise completely driven by Christian allegory. Lewis himself always denied this, famously insisting
“I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion.”

Whether he protests too much or not, the promise of innocence, happiness and peace in a fictional land populated by talking animals would be one Lewis returned to again and again in his Narnia books. Perhaps not just to proselytise.  Perhaps also to journey back in the imagination to the secure childhood happiness he could never recover in reality. 

I didn’t grow up in Belfast in 1906, and nor did I suffer the tragedy ‘Jack’ did at a young age.  I like to think that I had a happy childhood. But I also believe that when you write children’s books, especially those with created worlds, you inevitably write out – directly or indirectly – layers of your own feelings as a child. When you finish those books, and leave that world, in some small way, you finish a part of your childhood too.

And perhaps that’s why I’m feeling emotional.

Piers Torday

@PiersTorday

www.pierstorday.co.uk

Let’s hear it for My Naughty Little Sister! - by Emma Barnes

I’m always surprised when people compare my books to those by other authors. Not because I think I’m so dazzlingly original (in fact, when I go into schools, my answer to that question “But how do you get ideas?” is usually “I get ideas because over the years I’ve read a lot of books!”) but because the comparisons aren’t usually the authors or books I would have thought of. So when somebody mentioned to me that Wild Thing reminded them of Dorothy Hughes’s classic My Naughty Little Sister stories, first I was surprised, then I thought it was time to dig out a copy and see for myself. 

My Naughty Little Sister was first written for BBC Radio’s Children Hour. Perhaps this is why they are such wonderful read-alouds. I’ve heard some adults claim that the strong narrative voice is rather too cosy ("And what do you think My Naughty Little Sister did next...") and therefore annoying. Personally, I think this is what makes the stories so perfect for young children, guiding them through the stories (I’d recommend My Naughty Little Sister as a first read-aloud when moving onto chapter books). But then I do like a strong narrative voice (the Narnia books are another example where some find the narrator intrusive, but I find it confiding, and entertaining). 

There is a lovely nostalgia about My Naughty Little Sister, too. I think this is because not only do the stories now seem very quaint and long-ago, but even when Dorothy Edwards was writing them she was remembering a past time (her own childhood, and her own naughty little sister). So such details as washing day are lovingly portrayed, in a way they maybe wouldn’t be if they were contemporary to the reader, and therefore taken for granted. (In this way they remind me a little of Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s Little House books, in capturing the domestic details of a distant time.) 

I’m also envious, not only of the apparent safety of that long ago time, but also the freedom it gives a writer to give her child character adventures. My Naughty Little Sister is only four, but she can go on a train ride all by herself (with only the guard to keep an occasional eye on her). She can also travel from home under her own steam, and at one point is sent spontaneously to spend a day with her older sister at school. How much harder to construct real-life adventures now that young children always have to be supervised! 

Most all, though, the charm of the stories is in the character of My Naughty Little Sister herself. The stories may feel old fashioned, but they are never preachy or moralistic. My Naughty Little Sister thinks for herself. If the family has to look after a baby for the day, she really doesn’t see why she should pretend to like babies, just because it’s the done thing. And she makes friends with all kinds of unlikely people, grown up or child, because she responds to them honestly and directly. 

Her character, I think, is brilliantly portrayed in the illustrations by Shirley Hughes. 

So, even if I still don’t get the comparison with my own books, I certainly feel the compliment! And if you’re looking to escape into a young child’s world, in a gentler, cosier time, I’d recommend My Naughty Little Sister.
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Emma's new series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways) is out now from Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps


Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Leaving the Land of Make-Believe

The first indication I had that I was crossing the frontier from childhood into adolescence was during a game of make-believe. I remember sitting on the floor of the landing outside my bedroom, a box of Playmobil knights beside me and a gate-leg table before me, ready to act out adventure stories and create valiant knights and wicked kings and queens from the plastic figures.

The gate-leg table was the only piece of furniture in the house that ever transformed itself into a castle. Its construction made it the perfect backdrop for elaborate battles because of the carved steps and ridges on the feet and legs and the broad plank connecting the legs at the base. The table top never figured in my fantasies; it was far too flat and boring. The base, on the other hand, was perfect for laying out a battle scene. I would place some knights at various points along the ledge, perhaps balancing a princess on the highest point as though imprisoning her in a tower. Other knights would take up position to defend their fortress (and their princess) while an army of attacking knights would surge forth in a pincer movement along the conveniently grass-green carpet. The fantasies were hardly original, but nonetheless real for me.

So, there I was, happily settling down on the landing of my parents' house, putting everything in place for a long, dream-filled afternoon of play. And that's when it happened. I picked up a knight, ready to make him charge at the castle, knock down the gate and scale the walls to perform his daring deed when - suddenly there was no castle. It remained stubbornly a table. I narrowed my eyes to try and shift my focus, to will the knight in my hand to take over and make the magic happen. But precisely nothing happened: the wooden legs and decorative carvings of the table refused to mutate into battlements and crenelations, and the knight remained small and stiffly plastic in my hands, his painted-on smile mocking me.

After this, similar things would happen in the playground at school. The corner I had used to play "imaginary houses" with my best friend was now merely an empty corner of tarmac. One by one my portals into the freedom of childhood's imagination were closing.

And so it was with books. Stories which had once instantly transported me into their worlds where I could be an orphan or a time-traveller or a rabbit running side by side with Hazel and Fiver were now merely words on the page.

Francis Spufford expresses this feeling of loss perfectly for me in his book The Child that Books Built. (If you have not read it, I urge you to do so.)

He says:

". . . the sensation was receding from the sentences that had once given me shocks; The Silver Chair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader had no new news to give me, and so they were fading out of my repertoire of important books, reduced to the mild status of former favourites. I would have to find other stories to love."

Spufford explores the loss of the wonder we (well, some of us) feel when our childhood favourites no longer seem able to work their magic on us.

Reading this made me take a look at my own children, on the threshold of adolescence, and realise how lucky they are with the wealth of reading material made available to them; stories written especially for their age group, bridging the once vast gap between children's and adult fiction.

In the early 1980s, such a literary bridge was only at the early stages of construction. By the age of thirteen, I knew I had to leave Narnia and grope my way blindfold into the adult world of reading. I was not successful. People would push the Classics on me to no avail, and I was not blessed with an engaging and inspiring English teacher, as my children are today. And so I fell by the wayside: I stopped reading. I did not pick up a book to read for pleasure until I was twenty-one, by which time I met a man who was able to enthuse me by his own love of literature.

People often ask me why I write for children. Until I read Spufford's book, I do not think I had seriously considered the reason. But it is obvious, I suppose: I am still yearning to recapture that sense of wonder I felt when I sat on the floor of the landing at my parents' house, where a table was a castle and plastic knights were kings.

The Perfect Christmas Book by Emma Barnes

Forgive me, those who don’t like to think about Christmas in November. But this is my last post this year and I’m going to use it to think about what makes the perfect Christmas book. 

A shiny cover is not enough. Nor is a Christmas theme necessarily what you want, although some subjects do crop up time and again – Nativity plays for example, have inspired some great stories. And sometimes a lack of Christmas cheer is somehow more Christmassy (who can forget the present-less start to Little Women? Or Laura Ingalls Wilder and her beloved, homely, home-made rag doll?)  And where Christmas does feature it can be the downright ghastliness of it all that produces the best read (that’s the case with several of my choices below). 

But beyond that, what’s really wanted is atmosphere. I’ve only written one book myself, Wolfie, that I consider truly “Christmassy”, and it’s less because the action culminates in the Christmas holidays, and an exchange of presents, than because it contains deep woods, snow, church clocks chiming midnight and wolves – all of these elements associated in my mind with timeless winter, and therefore Christmas. 

So here are my top Christmas reads for all ages – full of snowy woods, Nativity plays and festive ghastliness. But I’m well aware they reflect my own prejudices, and my own childhood favourites. Which ones have I missed? Which would you recommend? 

Father Christmas - by Raymond Briggs. 

 

 Brigg’s Father Christmas is definitely of the “Christmas is ghastly” school of thought. Grumpy and curmudgeonly, he mutters “Blooming Christmas! Blooming reindeer!” as he struggles through the snow. With the minimum of words, Briggs has produced something both funny and beautiful that all ages can enjoy.

 The Killer Cat’s Christmas – by Anne Fine.

Anne Fine is good at disastrous families, and her anti-hero, Tuffy the Cat, is a wonderful invention. So a book about Tuffy’s Christmas, centring as it does on one of the most ghastly aspects of Christmas for many people – visiting relations – is bound to be hilarious. Bad Cat Tuffy relates his own story, and the succession of disasters that led to him spending Christmas locked in the garage. Aimed at newly independent readers, it’s a read that will be enjoyed by almost anyone. 

Lucy and Tom’s Christmas by Shirley Hughes

 Here it's the pictures that evoke a truly marvellous atmosphere, especially when the over-excited Tom goes for a calming walk with Grandpa.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

 

This is an absolute humdinger of a book – a comic classic in the US, where is spawned a film, but hardly known in the UK. The Herdmann children are every kind of ghastly and when they take over the annual Christmas Pageant at the Presebyterian Church disaster is sure to follow. But despite all the mishaps, the result is a truly moving triumph – and the book goes to the core of Christmas, I feel, but in the least sloppy, yet most heartfelt way.

 End of Term by Antonia Forest

This book is out of print, and also a school story – with a fair amount of the action concerned with netball and other non-Christmas matters. But bear with me - it contains the most beautifully written account of a Nativity Play I have ever read. Antonia Forest never won the acclaim in her life-time that she deserved, but her superb writing is well worth savouring at any age – if you can afford the price of the book, that is, for those in the know are prepared to pay high prices for her. 

The Hobbit – by JRR Tolkien. 

OK, so with the movie out in December, it’s not just me who is going to think this classic tale of Bilbo Baggin’s adventures the perfect Christmas read. But it is. Christmas plays no part in Tolkien’s mythology of MiddleEarth (unlike C.S.Lewis’s Narnia – see below) but it’s got the right atmosphere, in spades. Who could question that this tale of lost treasure, wolves, winter, and dragons makes for a perfect fireside story, while nibbling on some Christmas cake? 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis

Supposedly Tolkien didn’t approve of his friend C.S. Lewis introducing Father Christmas into a book which already contained such diverse elements as fauns and centaurs straight out of the Greek myths, and talking beasts. It may lack consistency, but it works beautifully: the woods, the wolf secret police, the lamplight shining on the snow, the mothball-smelling fur coats, and the sardines for tea. And then there comes the sledge-ride, and the arrival of Spring... 

And finally, unbeatable I reckon for a Christmas atmosphere - 

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper 

A fantasy story, in which young Will discovers that he is one of the “Old Ones” who must battle the Dark, it takes place in rural Berkshire, close by Windsor, and despite the fact that Cooper’s mythology is inspired by a rather Celtic version of King Arthur, is full of the rituals of a traditional Christmas season. There is a wonderful carol service in a tiny rural church, a carol-singing expedition, but best of all is when the snow begins to descend, deeper and ever-deeper, and the village takes refuge in the ancient Greythorne Manor on Christmas day... 

Cooper wrote this book after emigrating to the US, and I can’t help feeling that it is shot through with nostalgia for a place and a childhood world she had left far behind. I also can’t help finding echoes of another great Christmassy classic, The Box of Delights by John Masefield.

So, which Christmas read have I forgotten?  Which is your favourite? 

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Emma Barnes's latest book is Wolfie

Sometimes A Girl's Best Friend Is ...A Wolf.

Book of the Week in Books for Keeps"

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