Tag holidays

Santa Selfie / I Went to See Santa

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Santa Selfie
Peter Bently and Anna Chernyshova
Macmillan Children’s Books

Santa decides to take a holiday far away from all things Christmas and takes off for the sun on a tropical cruise.
However, his hopes of a peaceful trip are soon thwarted when a little girl picks up a tell tale bookmark that falls from Santa’s pool-side reading material.

Before you can say ‘sunbathing’ everyone aboard the ship knows of the special passenger and he’s beleaguered with people wanting to take Santa selfies. There’s even one of his yoga session.

Eventually he takes desperate action and leaves the ship, but still he’s pursued by camera-clicking crowds. It’s the same no matter whether it be in Paris, Sydney, Cairo, Brazil, outside the Taj Mahal, or at the Grand Canyon, the snappers are there.
Enough is enough thinks Santa and with a quick call, courtesy of a small boy’s mobile, he summons his helper Elfie and off they go back to the North Pole.
Surely there he’ll be safe from selfie seekers …
I hate selfies but I found myself warming to Peter Bently’s festive frolic delivered with rhyming verve and illustrated by new to me artist, Anna Chernyshova, whose Santa-centric scenes are sure to bring smiles.
Selfie enthusiasts can take advantage of the cut-out back cover flap.

 

I Went to See Santa
Paul Howard
Bloomsbury Children’s Books

Prepare yourself for a seasonal take on the ‘I went to the shop and I bought …’ memory game. It’s started by a little girl (love her Christmas specs.) who is joined by a slightly littler boy as they take turns to add increasingly unlikely items to the list of items bestowed upon them by Santa in the run-up to the big day itself.
Packed with crazy scenes of sparkling treasure, skating penguins, soaring through space and more, this will surely fill a few minutes of festive story time and may well spark off a game of even wilder flights of fancy with a group of early years listeners.

Now! / Say Hello/ Kiss Goodnight

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Now!
Tracey Corderoy and Tim Warnes
Little Tiger Press
The older little Archie gets, the more demanding (albeit adorable); well maybe he was always VERY demanding but ‘Now’ is a word more frequently used by adults in my experience. Moreover, his constant demanding of same, always tends to end in minor catastrophes – for others mostly…

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though he does sometimes have to learn from his over-eagerness …

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When holiday time looms – ten days away to be precise – Archie finds it hard to contain himself; ten days is an enormously long time to wait. Dad comes up with an idea …

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and a few distractions to help time pass quickly.
Eventually the big H-day dawns and suddenly Archie has changed his tune; “Wait!” he cries. “We can’t go NOW!” …
To discover why Archie is demanding a delay, and to learn if they ever do get that promised plane trip

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and holiday, you’ll need to get hold of a copy of this beautifully funny book. Yet again the Archie/Tracey Corderoy/Tim Warnes amalgam works its magic.

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The little rhino’s always a winner in my book.

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Say Hello
Kiss Goodnight
Jane Cabrera
Templar Publishing
These two charming little books provide lots of opportunities for the very young to join in with the various baby animal sounds (not forgetting, a human one) and some actions too.
In Say Hello we do just that, first greeting the sun and the day itself …

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and then once they’re awake, greetings can be exchanged with Chick, Piglet, Puppy, Frog, Calf, Bunny, Lamb, Bee (I love this buzzy being) …

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and finally, a Baby “Goo Goo”.
Kiss Goodnight starts by bidding ‘Goodnight’ to the Moon and proffering a kiss to all the ‘Sleepy babies’: Fox … isn’t he adorable?

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Owl, Bat, Mouse, Kitten, Bear, Hedgehog, Wolf and Baby. Shh!
As with all Jane Cabrera’s books, pattern plays an important part: here it’s gorgeous patterned backgrounds against which she places the subjects addressed in the simple, patterned texts  and the brush-stroke patterns on the faces.
Perfect for sharing with the very youngest listeners and ideal too, for slightly older beginning readers to try for themselves. (And far superior to dull early scheme fodder.)
I love the near, but not perfect, symmetry of the various faces …

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and I can see youngsters, inspired by the illustrations, attempting to create similar faces for themselves and perhaps making them into masks.

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