Celebrate the Season – Let It Snow!

Celebrate the Season - Let It Snow! by Taylor Garland is a Christmas story for 8 year olds about meeting your dad's new partner and her daughter over one weekend in the snow.

What happens

Chloe has been counting down to this weekend since October. A lodge in the mountains, snow, a party, and the perfect dress packed flat on top of everything else.

She's also packed the photo of her mum, who died when Chloe was very small. She takes it everywhere.

What she hasn't packed is any idea of what Sandy will be like.

The meeting goes wrong in about ninety seconds. Chloe's dog spots Sandy's cat, the lead goes flying, a table nearly comes down, the cat scratches the dog's nose, and Chloe's dad turns out to be badly allergic to cats and to have forgotten to mention it. A door slams.

Then it goes right. The girls make decorations out of coffee filters and kitty treat lids, discover they both play basketball and both watched the same six hour cookie programme, and Chloe starts thinking the word "sister".

Then it goes wrong again, hard, because Sandy says something that isn't true and knows it isn't.

That's the shape of the whole thing and it's very well done. Nobody in it is a villain. Sandy is prickly because her parents' divorce only became final in September and nobody asked how she felt about any of it. Chloe rushes at people because she wants a sister so much it hurts.

Have you ever wanted something to go well so badly that you went and ruined it? Your reader will see that coming before either girl does, which is a lovely feeling to have while you're reading.

It's American, so there's a lodge in the Poconos and a maitre d' and cookies, but nothing a child will trip over.

Two things sit in the background rather than on the page. Chloe's mother is dead, and Chloe is used to conversations stopping when she mentions it. Her dog has a stomach condition and gets ill on the trip, which frightens her more than it troubles him. Neither is dwelt on. But if you've got a child who has lost a parent, this one will land somewhere specific and you'd want to know first.

What to read next

If it goes down well, Home for the Holidays is in the library too. Same series, different family. Alyssa has just moved to Florida, it's seventy degrees in December, nobody has put up decorations, and she isn't feeling remotely Christmassy about it.