Perhaps it's the spirit of the season that permeates this book, even for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere. 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. And be sure to check out my bio page to learn a little about me and the Picture Book/Chapter Book Calendars I sell on Etsy! Shirley Hughes is a great loss to children’s literature and this, of all her books, seems to me one that will last. 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.

The quiet joys of Christmas preparations and the day itself, with great sympathy for a child's perspective.I grew up with Lucy and Tom in the late Seventies and early Eighties, so revisiting the book now feels rather like looking at my own childhood Christmases, laid out in lovely thick gouache.

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. Her books include the wordless picture book Up and Up , collection of rhymes and poems Out and About , and for the very young The Nursery Collection . To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first recipient of BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger, and the Alfie series. 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.

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. Shirley Hughes’s illustrations have the same effect as discovering an old reel of cine film buried in the loft. She also collaborated with her daughter, Clara Vulliamy, on the Dixie O'Day series; which saw Shirley with an illustrator for the first time with Shirley writing the text and Clara creating the illustrations. This wonderfully evocative Christmas book reminds me so vividly of my own childhood Christmases, with my mother making mince pies at the big wooden kitchen table and the Salvation Army playing Christmas carols.The illustrations are so detailed and the story is very cute with hilariously accurate depictions of children’s emotions. She won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice and was awarded the OBE for her distinguished service to children's literature. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. My boys found it inspirational--and pointed out that we did Christmas crackers earlier in the week rather than at Christmas dinner.