I'm sure I get more pleasure from it every year that passes, enjoying the wonderful illustrations and the simple story of a Christmas with family and friends together. She wrote two novels for older children, Hero on a Bicycle , about a 13-year-old Italian boy during the occupation of Florence, and Whistling in the Dark , set during the Liverpool Blitz. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first recipient of BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award. Shirley Hughes is the illustrator of more than two hundred children’s books and has won many prestigious awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal twice.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. My boys found it inspirational--and pointed out that we did Christmas crackers earlier in the week rather than at Christmas dinner. This wonderful heartwarming story was read to me as a child and brings back so many happy memories as I now have the privilege of reading it to my niece.With each review, I provide a Cleanliness Report, mentioning any objectionable content I come across so that parents and/or conscientious readers (like me) can determine beforehand whether they want to read a book or not. The illustrations are so detailed and the story is very cute with hilariously accurate depictions of children’s emotions. Lovely time for read aloud with what I think are British traditions of Christmas pudding (Lucy and Tom stir), making cards, how they decorate and even what they give as gifts to each family member.

A rubber in the shape of a dog and a ‘smart bow-tie on elastic’ for dad, a ‘comb in a case for Granny with A for Alison on it (because that’s Granny’s name)’ and best of all ‘a pen for Lucy which changes into different colours’. Shirley Hughes was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, in 1927, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. One of the loveliest things to do at Christmas is cuddle up and enjoy a good picture book together – and these classic stories have really stood the test of time.Content surprises are super annoying, especially when you’re 100+ pages in, so here’s my attempt to help you avoid that! It's the first Christmas book I've ever read that showed the children "posting" their letters to Santa by burning them in the fireplace. Shirley Hughes’s illustrations have the same effect as discovering an old reel of cine film buried in the loft. I also love the English flavor of these books, fun to point out expressions like "cross" that may not be so familiar to American children. The page where we see the presents that Lucy and Tom have both bought for their families raised a particular chuckle of recognition.