Tag Selom Sunu

The Christmas Carrolls: The Christmas Competition / We Wish You a Merry Christmas and other festive poems

jillrbennett Leave a comment

The Christmas Carrolls: The Christmas Competition
Mel Taylor Bessent, illustrated by Selom Sunu
Farshore

This story sees the Carrolls competing for The Most Festive Family. Also in contention for winning the prize – a trip to New York City – are the Klauses.

With just two weeks to prepare for a visit from the editor of the Christmas Chronicle who will be judging the competition, the Carrolls go into frenzied preparation mode. Surely those Klauses, with a house on Candy Cane Lane couldn’t be more festive, could they? Holly is worried. Also on her mind though, are the upcoming Halloween activities her friends are all excited about. Must she miss out completely on the spooky fun to try and do her utmost to help her family win that competition? She feels somewhat conflicted, but can she make her mum and dad understand. Top of their agenda is to pay a clandestine visit to Candy Cane Lane and take a look at their opposition. Things don’t quite go to plan though. Just as they’re on the point of leaving, the front door opens and out come the Klauses – Mr, Mrs and their children Poinsettia and Toboggan. 

Rather than sending them packing, Mrs K offers to show them round Klausland with its dancing penguins and private ski mountain. That’s when Holly sees a baby penguin with a broken wing and unequal size feet that the Klaus children call Nuisance.
Next morning what does Holly discover in her room but the very same baby penguin, which she names Sue. Mum insists that Holly return the penguin that same day: Holly however, has other penguin plans.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking and that visit from the newspaper editor draw ever closer …

Zany seasonal reading that is full of heart, some shenanigans, a sackful of good intentions and plenty of lively illustrations from Selom Sunu.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas and other festive poems
chosen and illustrated by Chris Riddell
Macmillan Children’s Books

Chris Riddell has selected almost fifty festive poems, mixing lots of old favourites including Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit from St Nicholas with some exciting new seasonal poetry. You’ll find the secular and the religious, and both serious and fun offerings herein, some of the latter being those Talking Turkeys of Benjamin Zephaniah – I definitely support ‘Turkeys United’; and Clare Bevan’s spirited Just Doing My Job about a Christmas drama performance: teachers and pupils together will enjoy this one.
You’ll likely be amused by the sequel to The Twelve Days of Christmas (for which Riddell provides several superb illustrations) – it’s Dave Calder’s offering on a phone call that takes place on the thirteenth day of Christmas.

I really enjoyed another poem new to me, Dom Conlon’s Father Christmas sent me the Moon.
With the world as it is at the moment though, I was especially drawn to John Agard’s Green Magi and Lem Sissay’s Let There Be Peace.

Awesomely illustrated throughout, this has something for all ages.

The Christmas Carrolls

jillrbennett Leave a comment

The Christmas Carrolls
Mel Taylor-Bessent, illustrated by Selom Sunu
Farshore

Nine year old Holly, daughter of Christmas crazy parents Nick and Snow Carroll has been home schooled until a house suddenly becomes available on Sleigh Ride Avenue. Thrilled to bits her parents decide to move the family there and she is enrolled at the local primary school.

However, when Holly goes to Lockerton Primary with the Backpack of Cheer her dad’s given her and first day Christmas cards (in hot September!), for her year five classmates she realises not everyone shares her enthusiasm for spreading seasonal cheer; and, there are all those school rules and regulations to contend with too. She desperately wants a friend.


Then she hears some of the things that have been said about her: ‘from another planet’, ‘weird’, ‘eccentric’ or was it ‘electric’, ‘that I didn’t know how to dress myself’. How much worse can things get?

Seemingly Holly is on a downward spiral. However, the new unChristmassy approach she tries doesn’t feel right either: her cheerometer rating plummets to zero and she tells her parents, “Nobody wants us here … Nobody wants to celebrate Christmas all year round … And I don’t think I want to either.”

But, could her burgeoning friendship with Archer (which has also taken a turn for the worse) help her out and restore that feel good factor, and not only for herself? Perhaps – for when she learns of some children who really need help, Holly decides that nothing is impossible when it comes to spreading good cheer.

Now I’m somebody who is anything but filled with festive delight when I see the Christmas lights put up and turned on early in November, so initially I wasn’t sure about Holly and her family. However, Mel Taylor-Bessent’s debut story, for all its seasonal trappings, is about so much more that Christmas. For Holly it’s a steep learning journey and one whereon she discovers the importance of real friendship, that not everyone lives in the same way, as well as that her mum hasn’t always had it good.
What emerges loud and clear from this wonderfully warm, humorous tale is that the essentials of Christmas are hope, inclusion and community; and these should be for every day of the year rather than being restricted to just a short time. The author has created some smashing characters (illustrated by Selom Sunu) that certainly will linger in the minds of readers and listeners. This would make a terrific KS2 class read aloud.