Books for December

Winter and Celebration are the themes this month, as you might expect, but here’s hoping that some of these will become new seasonal favourites for you both at home and in the classroom.

Snow. Walter De La Mere and Carolina Rabei. Faber, 2014, pp32. £6.99 ISBN: 978-0571305575

Part of a beautiful Four Seasons series of picturebooks from Faber, pairing De La Mere’s poems with the most stunning illustrations. This one is a particularly special marriage of words and images. As the winter’s day draws to a close, a family prepares for Christmas - decorating the tree, hanging stockings by the fire, putting out a plate of mince pies...Outside, the world turns to white. The limited colour palette with beautiful accents of red and orange really captures that magical winter light which reflects back from the snow and of course it’s a simply marvellously evocative poem. Young readers will get a lot of satisfaction from the language and the level of detail of Carolina's magical Christmas landscapes and festive family tableaux will keep children visually captivated too.

You’re Snug With Me. Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry Lantana Publishing, 2018, pp32 £11.99. ISBN: 978-1911373476

There could not be a more complete change in visual style, but these incredibly detailed and complex images inspired by Indian textile patterns, also work exceptionally well with the arctic landscapes and their flora and fauna and in particular with the delicate intricacy of snowflakes, which positively seem to sparkle. This is the second of the three collaborations of author and illustrator and here we are introduced to a family of polar bears, from the birth of the cubs to their first steps outside of the den. In telling them about the ocean and the land in winter and in summer, the animals all around them she reassuringly repeats the refrain: 'But hush now, you're snug with me.' It is a gorgeous wintry tale in which little readers will learn plenty about polar bears and their habitats, and the underlying ecological message. It would be equally good for exploring family relationships or topics on animal behaviours or polar regions.

Little Santa. John Agee. Scallywag Press, 2021, pp40, £12.99. ISBN: 978-1912650781

A perfect example of the much admired quirky John Agee humour and his minimalist, cartoon-style illustrations, with thick outlines and a muted snowy palette perfectly highlighting the pop of red which is little Santa’s red onesie. This is a perfect origin story for Santa Claus which has enough plausible detail to convince little readers and is light years away from many of the glittery and sickly-sweet Christmas stories filling supermarket shelves at this time of year. Santa and his large family live at the North Pole. While he loves it there, everyone else hates it and planned to move to Florida instead.  But just when everyone was packed and ready to leave, a huge snowstorm hits and Santa sets out to save his family.  He goes up the chimney to look for help and finds a flying reindeer and down another chimney, a group of elves.  The elves, reindeer and Santa made such a great team that the rest is history….The author has perfect control of the page turn and this will read aloud really well and be bound to generate lots of discussions about Santa’s origins.

A Night at Frost Fair. Emma Carroll. Illustrated by Sam Usher. Simon & Schuster, 2021, pp72, £10.99 ISBN: 978-1471199912

This seasonal time slip adventure takes Maya, our contemporary heroine, to a famous 1788 Frost Fair on the Thames.  She has been given an unidentified old and ugly brown lump “which was Edmund’s,” by her grandmother, which could not be more unlike the pretty sparkling gift given to her sister. As the weather turns wintry on their way home Maya finds herself swept along towards the frozen river and the sights sounds and smells of the Frost Fair. She also finds a boy running away from his captors and together they sample the delights of the fair. It is while buying gingerbread that Eddie is recaptured and Maya pursues him only to discover he is imprisoned in his own home because of his poor health. Maya leaves the gingerbread for him together with a note to his father to allow Eddie some freedom. Back in her own time the mystery of the brown lump and her family history is unravelled in a very satisfactory conclusion to this evocative tale, illustrated so beautifully by Sam Usher.

Refuge. Anne Booth and Sam Usher. Nosy Crow, 2016, pp32, £7.99. ISBN: 978-0857637710

The terrible, tragic events in the Channel and a refugee problem which does not seem to have improved since 2016, prompts me to remind everyone about this simply stunning book. As far as I can discover the fundraising aspect is still in place (published with no profit to publisher, author or bookseller. £5 from every book sold donated to the War Child charity) so it is well worth buying new copies. Refuge is a retelling of the Christmas story, but one with a difference: the focus of this short, lyrical picture book is the fleeing of Jesus, Mary and Joseph from Herod’s soldiers as they make their way to safe refuge in Egypt, told from the point of view of a donkey that helps take them there. The evocative images are almost entirely monochrome, but the use of gold to emphasise love and hope is very powerful. The family’s hope for the “kindness of strangers” and their fear of heading into the unknown mirrors the plight of all refugee families and this beautiful little book uses the familiar nativity story to develop empathy and understanding of the refugee crisis in readers of any age.

To download our full set of book recommendations for December, just visit our resources page and click on Reading with Joy.