Father Christmas and Me – by Matt Haig

19 12 2024

The final book in the trilogy, picking up from where we left off at the end of book two, when Amelia ended up coming to live with Father Christmas. She’s now attending school with the elf children, and struggling to get to grips with their subjects (elf maths is VERY different, eg: 2+2=snow, or a feather duvet), and she just doesn’t feel like she fits in.

There follows an accident with a sleigh, an elf that hates humans and spreads fake news about them in a very Trumpian fashion (this book was published in 2017, and you can tell!), and a warren full of rabbits, led by the Easter bunny – standard kids Christmas stuff, right?!

One problem that made me chuckle is that money in Elfhelm is chocolate coins, and when Father Christmas goes to withdraw money to cover the damages from the sleigh accident, it turns out that he has very few savings left as he ate it all… oops! And there is a point where our heroes are at great risk of being drowned in chocolate, what a pickle!

I’ll leave you with a line I thought was just beautiful:
“Books and trees are the same thing. My aunt used to tell me that books are just trees that are having a dream.”


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The Girl Who Saved Christmas – by Matt Haig

23 12 2023

The 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 Christmas in this book, but while there are a few call backs, it’s really not dependent on having read it, this stands alone well.

This is set in Victorian England, and as it’s a children’s book, of course we bump into Charles Dickens at one point, and crash into Queen Victoria’s bedroom in another (where she is sat up in bed wearing her crown – naturally).

The book follows the story of Amelia Wishart, a chimney sweep who early on loses her mother and is taken to the workhouse by a horrible man. This runs parallel to Father Christmas dealing with the lack of hope in the world and therefore lack of magic to power his sleigh, this is partly due a troll attack that stopped him from delivering last year at all!

So there’s a lot going on, the two stories obviously meet and overlap, and everything’s alright in the end.


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A Boy Called Christmas – by Matt Haig

24 12 2022

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!


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Anne of Ingleside – by L M Montgomery

20 01 2019

After two years, I’ve finally finished the main part of this series of books! There are two more that follow, but their focus is on the children, no more “Anne of….”, so I sort of consider this a job done!

That said, even thought this is an “Anne of” book, the focus really is on the children – Anne and Gilbert have six children including a set of twins, all with their different escapades, and not a huge amount of time spent on Anne other than when the children take their problems to her to solve. For the most of the book, Anne has become a flawless woman with her days of escapades and learning about herself long gone – but there is a really nice moment near the end where we find she’s not perfect after all, and she struggles with something so completely relatable to us all, it’s nice to see she’s still got a realistic side to her.

Still very enjoyable, warm and fuzzy, and an easy read.

As with the previous books, this one still has some lovely one liners – here are a few of my favourites:

  • “‘Praying’s good. I lost a dime once and I prayed and I found a quarter. That’s how I know.'”
  • “‘Hasn’t the world got its face washed nice and clean?’ cried Di, on the morning sunshine returned.”
  • “‘God doesn’t make bargains, He gives… gives without asking from us in return, except love.'”
  • “‘If a minister preaches a sermon that hits home to some particular individual people always suppose he meant it for that very person,’ said Anne. ‘A hand=me-down cap is bound to fit somebody’s head, but it doesn’t follow that it was made for him.'”
  • “‘David is going to be married at last,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘He’s been a long time making up his mind which was cheaper, marrying or hiring.'”
  • “‘The same summer will never be coming twice'”
  • “Anne knew quite well that this idea was absolutely unreasonable, but when was jealousy ever reasonable?”


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Brain Freeze – by Tom Fletcher

28 02 2018

I just read a book in under half an hour!
Yes, it’s for children.
Yes, it cost £1 new.
Yes, it’s only 86 pages, some of which are only pictures.
But that’s not the point!

I started the other book I’m reading over a month ago and am only halfway through, and so was getting frustrated with my lack of progress. Generally I refuse to start another book while I have one on the go, but as mentioned, this one was tiny, so when I saw it in tesco, I picked it up – it looked like fun! As well as being by Tom from McFly!

It’s a very sweet and very clever little book – Izzy’s Grandpa was an Ice Cream Man, he passed away a year ago and so she eats ice cream every day to remember him. One night, she hasn’t been able to have ice cream and worries she’s forgetting him, so she sneaks out to his old van, and finds it can do so much more than just produce icecream – it can travel in time!


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