Friday’s Library snapshot …

Soon it will be 24th December and that means work for Father Christmas. ” Blooming Christmas again,” he mutters as he gets out his nice warm bed … and so begins a most surprising and delightful Christmas story, for Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas is a true original and not the usual stereotyped kindly white-haired old gentleman.

Briggs’s Father Christmas is certainly a kindly white-haired old gentleman, but he is so much more as well; he is inclined to be grumpy, he is very fond of a cup of tea, loves to sing in the shower and is in fact, the most thoroughly human and endearing Father Christmas imaginable.   His exploits are drawn in a series of strip pictures, filled with every detail and very funny, which occasionally erupt into full page spreads.

This is a picture book is to warm the heart of any humbug … young or old.  It is Raymond Briggs’s own affectionate tribute to a universally beloved character.