Children's book reviews: Colfer brings readers to dark places, but fun and magic prevail

In her Christmas children’s books roundup Pet O’Connell selects three books full of festive flavour

Eoin Colfer's 'Juniper's Christmas' has an all-action plot, hi-tech wizardry, wise-cracking humour, and  strong sense of social justice, all topped off with a sprinkling of North Pole magic.

• Juniper’s Christmas
• by Eoin Colfer
• (HarperCollins, €15.40)

In an increasingly dark world of conflict and division, Santa Claus remains a shining lantern of hope that goodness may still prevail, the embodiment of the “spirit of Christmas”.

What, though, in a commercialised society where Christmas wishes become ever-lengthening lists of demands that must be met for fear of childhood disappointment, if Santa himself became disillusioned?

That is the bleak scenario presented by Eoin Colfer, one in which Nicholas Claus, once dedicated to his vocation as Santa, becomes frustrated with his job, with his weight gain due to a diet of mince pies and cookies, plus the knowledge that “more and more North Pole presents were being dumped every season while still in their wrapping paper”.

When his beloved wife Sarika, a champion for the homeless, becomes ill and dies, Nicholas’ heart is no longer in his work.

Resenting the expectations of children with their wish lists, he resolves to honour his wife’s memory by instead helping only those who truly need his assistance.

Now, almost 10 years since Santa last delivered presents, younger children have doubts about his existence and wonder whether he might just have been a figment of their older siblings’ imaginations.

Those doubts are not shared by Ghanaian immigrant Briar Lane, however. 

Forever grateful for a gift he once received from Santa, he organises an annual vigil of Christmas enthusiasts who gather to sing carols and collect donated provisions for the homeless people who live in the park where he works as caretaker.

After Briar dies suddenly, leaving his wife Jennifer and daughter Juniper in grief and shock — and the park without a keeper — Jennifer and Juniper, through their sorrow, endeavour to carry on Briar’s work and continue his acts of human kindness.

As if a depressed Santa and the deaths of two altruistic people in its opening chapters had not already brought this children’s Christmas story to Dickensian levels of gloom, Jennifer then disappears without trace, leaving Juniper in the care of Duchess, one of the park’s resident lost souls.

That, however, is where the story really begins to take flight. Reindeer flight.

Prompted by Duchess, Juniper, aged 11 and terrified at the prospect of losing a second parent, seeks the help of the secretive Niko, who lives in the woods and is known to help those living on the fringes of society.

Niko, whom Juniper strongly suspects to be the reclusive retired Santa Claus, is deaf to her pleas.

Fortunately, Juniper turns out to possess sufficient stores of resourcefulness and courage herself and persists with her quest to find her mother, even when faced with an officious park keeper eager to evict its human inhabitants, and an Irish criminal gang with plans to muscle in on the Santa vacancy with a money-making scam.

Death, the private life and loves of Santa Claus, consumerist greed, and society’s treatment of the homeless are topics that together may weigh too heavily for some parents to consider this suitable Christmas reading for younger children. 

That, however, would be to overlook the all-action plot of Juniper’s Christmas; its marvellously maleficent environmentally-unfriendly baddies; hi-tech wizardry straight out of Colfer’s Artemis Fowl; wise-cracking humour; and a strong sense of social justice, all topped off with a sprinkling of North Pole magic.

• The Friendship Fairies Save Christmas
• by Lucy Kennedy
• Gill Books, €13.99

Every year, in the world of children’s publishing, Christmas needs saving by someone or something, be it children, elves, dogs, cats, or cartoon characters.

In Kerry, naturally, King Puck saves Christmas, while among the seasonal salvage classics of recent years have been Slinko the Super Sausage Saves Christmas and Unicorn and the Rainbow Poop Save Christmas.

This Christmas, the job falls to radio and television presenter Lucy Kennedy’s Friendship Fairies, who flutter into action when children all around the world are in danger of not receiving sweet treats in their Santa deliveries.

It seems that even the Red Forest, where teams of elves with strange mullet haircuts work to fulfil all the orders of goodies in time for Christmas Day, is suffering the effects of climate change.

Mrs Twiddle, elf-appointed boss of the workshops, is unimpressed at the actions of the “foolish humans” who “wreck the planet by driving their smelly cars, cutting down beautiful trees and throwing their rubbish everywhere”.

Now, in December, the weather is so warm that the treat-making machines are overheating and the Red Forest elves are starting to panic about looming deadlines.

As luck would have it though, Richie Dixon, father of Friendship Fairy sisters Emme, Holly, and Jess, is trying to establish his new bakery business, which has been beset by problem after problem.

With millions of candy canes, gingerbread men, and snowflake biscuits to be made and so little time left before December 25, could the fairies and their father possibly work fast enough to save the (Christmas) day?

Illustrated by Dublin’s Phillip Cullen, whose festive red cover sets the Christmas scene, The Friendship Fairies Save Christmas is a sweet treat for young readers aged six-plus.

• A Christmasaurus Carol
• by Tom Fletcher
• Puffin, €20.99

If Christmas ever needed saving from someone, that someone is Ebenezer Scrooge, who is as miserly as ever as he steps out of Dickens’ Victorian novel and straight into a brand new story.

“Some stories are so powerful that they leap out of their own books and into the pages of others,” says McFly musician and dinosaur poop aficionado Tom Fletcher, by way of introduction.

“Some characters are so good, or in this case so bad, that they find themselves floating out of their books altogether and into the minds and hearts and imaginations of the reader, and crossing into the real world.”

A Christmasaurus Carol by Tom Fletcher

So it is that the man whose very name has become a byword for meanness of spirit still haunts the festive season. 

Even after all these years, it appears that Scrooge harbours ambitions of cancelling Christmas and no ghost of the past, present, or future is going to stop him.

So it’s down to wheelchair-user William Trundle (who has already saved Christmas three times), his family, friends Eddie and Lucy, Santa himself, and of course the Christmasaurus, to ensure that this Christmas is not bah-humbugged.

In this, the fourth 'Christmasaurus' adventure, the crew must find a way to return Scrooge to A Christmas Carol, the book from whence he came, or Tiny Tim and the Cratchit family won’t be the only ones facing a bleak midwinter.

With the magic of Christmas and a flying blue dinosaur, an “impossible creature” that grew up in the North Pole, anything is surely possible.