How do you feel about the run up to Christmas? Does it fill you with joy at the excitement that Christmas brings or terror at the thought of all that still needs to be achieved? Well fear not for we can help out, in a small degree by suggesting some calming reading time with your children and some possible ideas for books you can buy them that will keep them very happy and contented. Of course Christmas is all about the birth of a new baby, so why not celebrate another birt

Occasionally a picture book comes along which, in my opinion, stands head and shoulders (and most of the rest of its body) above anything else newly published. Amy Dixon’s Maurice the Unbeastly, wonderfully illustrated by Karl James Mountford, certainly fits the bill here. Published by Sterling Children’s Books in the US, and released in the UK at the beginning of October, this is a book brilliantly designed to engage stroppy toddlers (and older) and to remind adults reading