Have you noticed that the most popular Christmas films or stories all centre on some kind of tragedy?
Kevin McCallister is abandoned by his family. Tiny Tim is on death’s door and Scrooge only chooses to help after he’s threatened with death. Susan in Miracle on 34th Street is without a father until her mum meets Fred. So the magic combination for a cracking Christmas story, pardon the puns, does seem to be something terrible + loveable characters = festive magic. Am I wrong here?
So, not by any coincidence, these Christmas books for 8 year olds do follow that very formula. As a bit of a warning, three of the five on this page have a death or a family break-up in them.
Here are my five, with a note on which are funny and which are sad. A Boy Called Christmas, The Christmas Pig, The Christmas Carrolls, Bah! Humbug! and The Night I Met Father Christmas.
Four of them are on our books for 8 year olds shelf and one sits a year younger. Further down there are Christmas books for 7, 9 and 10 year olds too.
Five Christmas books for 8 year olds
A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig
A Boy Called Christmas
Nikolas is eleven and lives in a one-room cottage in Finland. He has had two presents in his entire life, a wooden sleigh and a doll carved out of a turnip. His mouse Miika wants cheese more than anything and has never seen any. Then a hunter knocks on the door. The king is offering twelve thousand rubles for proof that elves are real, and Nikolas’s father leaves on the expedition. Aunt Carlotta moves in to mind him.
This is one of the sad ones. Nikolas’s mother was killed by a bear when he was six, and the book tells you so in the opening chapter. Aunt Carlotta is cruel to him for a long stretch as well. The Girl Who Saved Christmas and Father Christmas and Me come after it.
The Christmas Pig by J. K. Rowling
The Christmas Pig
Jack’s toy pig is called DP. He’s grey and faded, with button eyes Mum sewed on after the old ones fell out. On Christmas Eve, in the back of Grandpa’s car, Jack’s stepsister Holly throws DP out of the window onto the motorway. She buys a replacement with her pocket money. That night the new pig stands up, puts his trotters on his hips and tells Jack about the Land of the Lost.
This is probably the saddest of the five. Jack’s parents have split up, and early on he hears his dad shouting and then driving away. Later he wrecks his room in a rage and stamps on the new pig. The Land of the Lost is ruled by the Loser, who the toys say eats the Things he catches. So it’s sad and it’s frightening in places.
The Christmas Carrolls by Mel Taylor-Bessent
The Christmas Carrolls
The Carrolls celebrate Christmas every single day of the year. Holly is nine. Her toilet seat sings We Wish You A Merry Christmas and she checks the snow-o-meter every morning, in July. Then the family buy a house on Sleigh Ride Avenue without going to see it. The street turns out to be grey and tinsel-free, the neighbour tells Holly that singing is frowned upon, and she’s about to go to school for the very first time.
Holly arrives late to her new class throwing snowflake confetti and hands out Christmas cards in September. A pile of them is left unopened on the tables at break, and that’s the one sad moment in the book. There’s plenty of toilet humour.
Bah! Humbug! by Michael Rosen
Bah! Humbug!
Harry Gruber is eleven and has the lead in the school’s A Christmas Carol. His dad Ray runs a website and would rather not be at a school play on Christmas Eve. The play is set out as a script in the real Victorian words. Around it is the Gruber family in the hall watching, or in Ray’s case leaving halfway through for a work deal. Harry’s little sister Eva knows every line by heart.
Marley’s ghost is chained and moaning, and Scrooge says some vicious things. In the modern half, Ray keeps seeing the face of his best friend from school, who died young in an accident.
The Night I Met Father Christmas by Ben Miller
The Night I Met Father Christmas
Jackson plans to stay awake on Christmas Eve and meet Father Christmas himself. To put his parents off the scent, he says he’d rather work through some maths problems while listening to classical music. Then there’s a bang, the ceiling shakes, and Father Christmas gets stuck up the chimney grumbling that nobody ever cleans theirs. He’s tiny, with pointy ears. Jackson asks how he became Father Christmas in the first place, and most of the book is the answer.
Great for 7 year olds. The story opens with a friend telling Jackson that Father Christmas isn’t real, and Jackson lies awake worrying about it. The book’s own answer is that he’s real and standing in the sitting room. Ben Miller’s Adventures of a Christmas Elf is here too. It’s told by Tog, an elf who makes crackers in the Workshop.
Christmas books for 7 year olds
Christmas in Camelot is a Magic Tree House book, longer and darker than the early ones. Jack and Annie are invited to Camelot for Christmas Eve and find a dark castle where a spell has taken all the joy out of the kingdom.
Stanley’s Christmas Adventure is a Flat Stanley story. A girl called Sarah Christmas lands by the fireplace two nights before Christmas to say her father has decided to stay at home this year.
The Santa List is the silly one. Aisling and Joe are in so much trouble that every babysitter in town refuses to come, until Mrs Grough arrives. She’s ex-army and thinks salt in her hot chocolate is delicious.
Dog Diaries: Happy Howlidays! is a rescue dog’s diary of his first winter out of the shelter. He only understands about half of what humans say, so Christmas is Critter-Mess Day.
Christmas books for 9 and 10 year olds
Operation Nativity has the Angel Gabriel crash-landing in a sheep field in Hampshire. Oscar and his little sister find him, and it stays very silly.
The Miracle on Ebenezer Street is George, who is ten, and whose dad has cancelled Christmas three years running. His Nana Flo smuggles him off to the Christmas fair in Hyde Park with a moustache made of tinsel for a disguise.
The Snow Sister is short and sad. Whenever it snows, Pearl builds a snow girl and dresses it in something that belonged to her sister Agnes, who died of a fever three winters ago.
The Box of Delights is one of our free books. Kay Harker is on his way home from school when a stranger who already knows his name asks him to pass on a warning. There’s more about it on my classic children’s books list.
For 10 year olds there’s Tinsel: The Girls Who Invented Christmas. Over a hundred years ago, Blanche Claus lives under a bridge in London and hates Christmas. Then an old woman gives her a red bauble that’s colder than ice.
Christmas chapter books from series they already know
The Killer Cat’s Christmas has Tuffy locked in the garage in disgrace, telling you the whole story and how none of it was his fault.
Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog is Trevor trying to hang on to three puppies that are being sold before Christmas. His plan is to put the buyers off.
Hetty Feather’s Christmas is not a cosy one. Hetty is thirteen and back at the Foundling Hospital, awake in the small hours of Christmas morning with a parcel from her mama under her pillow. The other Hetty books are on my best Jacqueline Wilson books list.
And for an 11 year old, Mistletoe and Murder is the fifth Murder Most Unladylike mystery, set in Cambridge over Christmas.
If they’d rather have a book with no Christmas in it at all, there are five on my chapter books for 8 year olds list.
Just so you know…
You can read all of these in Little Reads. It’s a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books, at £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. If you only want a look, there are 100+ free books on a free account, and The Box of Delights is one of them.
These are ebooks, so there’s nothing here to wrap. Little Reads suits a child who will have finished their Christmas book by Boxing Day and wants another.