Christmas picture books are arriving on my doorstep on an almost daily basis right now, with The Twelve Dogs of Christmas one of the most recent, and I’m actually really enjoying starting to get into the Christmas spirit. Master C has already asked how many sleeps there are until Christmas and, for now, seems satisfied with my answer, so I just have to hope that the requests to put up the Christmas tree don’t start just yet!
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas is a lovely little tale about a puppy’s excitement in the lead up to his first Christmas. The lovely rhyming text makes it the perfect sort of book to read out loud and when I did so both Master C and Little Miss C snuggled up on the sofa with me to do so. They loved finding the little puppy in the pictures on each page, and Master C also really liked the rhymes and kept pointing out the words that they had rhymed with each other. I know this is something that they are doing in his class at school, so it’s always nice to see that carrying over into what we are reading together at home.
The book beautifully leads children through different Christmas traditions and with each page they can not only count how many dogs are in the picture, but also talk about the traditions themselves and which ones of them they do in their family. The illustrations are all full of lots of detail and action and that works really well with children of an age where they want to talk about the pictures as well as what is happening in the story.
I can see The Twelve Dogs of Christmas becoming a seasonal favourite here for and it’s definitely a perfect book to share with a child in the run up to Christmas.
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas was published on 5 October 2017 by Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4711-6617-4 Paperback £6.99. It is available to buy online here.
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of The Twelve Dogs of Christmas for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.
Leave a Reply