Last Christmas my parents got me the trilogy of Matt Haig’s children’s Christmas books. This is the first (although I believe they’re separate stories anyway), so once December came around it seemed a sensible time to read it!
It’s a Father Christmas origin story; Nikolas lives in Finland with his father, who is sent off on a mission to find the elves in the north. When he doesn’t return, Nikolas decides to see if he can go and find him, and the adventure begins from there. He meets a reindeer who he names Blitzen, who helps him on his way, he has his father old red and white hat – you can see the hints of where it’s going the whole way through.
It’s message is “an impossibility is just a possibility you don’t understand”, which isn’t really my way of thinking, but for a story about Father Christmas, of course it’s lovely.
And then the film version of it is on TV this afternoon, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they did with it!
ineke.co.uk 
[…] second in Matt Haig’s Christmas trilogy, I correct myself slightly on what I said last year – the books are not completely separate. The boy in the first book is the adult Father […]