Lucy & Tom's Christmas (Picture Puffin S.)

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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.

The quiet joys of Christmas preparations and the day itself, with great sympathy for a child's perspective. Hughes has a lovely endearing style to her drawing - I will certainly be reading and collecting many other titles from her. She won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice and was awarded the OBE for her distinguished service to children's literature. Hughes is so prolific and I highly recommend seeking out her picture books- not always so easy to find on this side of the ocean.My boys found it inspirational--and pointed out that we did Christmas crackers earlier in the week rather than at Christmas dinner. Shirley Hughes is a great loss to children’s literature and this, of all her books, seems to me one that will last. 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. 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. 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.

In 1930s Liverpool, young Bronwen and Dylan find kindness from an unexpected source when they are frightened by what they think is a ghost on Christmas Eve. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger, and the Alfie series.

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. 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’. 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. 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. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first recipient of BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award.