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 is the illustrator of more than two hundred children’s books and has won many prestigious awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal twice. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I used to read it every Christmas to my children when they were young and now I'm reading it again to my grandchildren.It's the first Christmas book I've ever read that showed the children "posting" their letters to Santa by burning them in the fireplace.

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. A rubber in the shape of a dog and a ‘smart bow-tie on elastic’ for dad, a ‘comb in a case for Granny with A for Alison on it (because that’s Granny’s name)’ and best of all ‘a pen for Lucy which changes into different colours’. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first recipient of BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award.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. My boys found it inspirational--and pointed out that we did Christmas crackers earlier in the week rather than at Christmas dinner.

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 . Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger, and the Alfie series. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Hughes has a lovely endearing style to her drawing - I will certainly be reading and collecting many other titles from her.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.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Perhaps it's the spirit of the season that permeates this book, even for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere. I'm sure I get more pleasure from it every year that passes, enjoying the wonderful illustrations and the simple story of a Christmas with family and friends together.

The page where we see the presents that Lucy and Tom have both bought for their families raised a particular chuckle of recognition. I also love the English flavor of these books, fun to point out expressions like "cross" that may not be so familiar to American children.