Jim's Spectacular Christmas

Product Information

Heartfelt, witty and full of fun, this children’s picture book is a sweet festive read – but at 80 pages (far beyond the norm for fans of Scheffler’s work) and with more complex language, it might be better suited at seven to nine-year-olds, rather than the pre-schoolers its artwork might suggest. Drawn in by its lit windows, the heartbroken figure is comforted by the various tableaux on show – one cold, dark night after another. Their father, Eric Thompson, presented the children’s TV programme Play School and went on to create and narrate The Magic Roundabout. The guilt present, that guilt gift, the fact that you feel guilty because you're not with your parents, auntie, siblings, Christmas is just a time that's absolutely built for guilt.

Are you even hosting this Christmas if you haven’t already flicked through the Food Network channel for inspiration? Enter Lucy: she’s fighting to save her job, and ends up stranded at the Miller family home while on a business trip. It was from Emma Thompson, a young actor who had begun to attract attention with TV series such as Fortunes of War and Tutti Frutti. And now she has collaborated with Scheffler, the illustrator associated with Julia Donaldson’s picture books, on this Christmas tale.He wrote and narrated The Magic Roundabout, which targeted families as a whole, rather than just little ones. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer ‘The question is not if, but when they will collaborate again’: Emma Thompson and Axel Scheffler. For Jim’s Spectacular Christmas, the Love Actually star teamed up with Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, and Emma explained to Chris why she wanted to centre a story around a dog and his feelings in the festive season. On what readers, young and old, should take away from reading Jim’s Spectacular Christmas, Emma replied: “I think it's a nice thing to read.

Scheffler still has the letter and has brought it along 34 years later to an interview to mark their first literary collaboration, on a children’s picture book, Jim’s Spectacular Christmas. Other historical details include the small printing press on which the cards were produced for Cole, an innovator who was also instrumental in introducing the world’s first postage stamp, the penny black. She draws the vowel out into a camp diphthong as part of a running joke with Scheffler as to which of them will seem most exciting to the children for whom their new book is intended: the actor who starred as Nanny McPhee and now as Mrs Trunchbull in the film of Matilda the Musical or the illustrator of the mega-selling Gruffalo books. That’s amazing,” says Thompson of the letter, which predates her six-year marriage to Branagh and was written from the flat they shared in 1988.This latest collective – with foreword by Felicity Cloake – brings together fairly handy tips (and plenty of hilariously useless tips in the modern day) with helpful diagrams. With those eyebrows and bold fashion, there may be nobody as distinctive as Cradock in the TV chef arena, and she was the OG having started her career in the 1950s. This year, we are introduced to Sky Terran, a woman in flux – she’s just lost a job she loved, and has moved back to the town of Middledip, where she had happy memories as a child. Humorously told and drawn though it is, this is a history book as well as a shaggy dog story – a delicate balancing act that became clear when it came to the portrayal of Queen Victoria, whose chest is being dabbed by her solicitous husband, Albert, to rid it of a tea stain when Jim catches his first glimpse of the royal family.