Daisy and the Trouble with Christmas

Daisy and the Trouble with Christmas by Kes Gray is a funny story for 5 year olds about a school nativity play that does not go to plan.

What happens

Daisy has been excited since September. She'd like it noted that this is Christmas's fault and not hers.

Something went wrong on stage this afternoon. Mrs Peters says Daisy has let herself down, her class down, the school down and everyone in the audience down. Daisy points out that Mrs Peters is the one who told her to carry the baby Jesus over to Mary and rock him first, so really it's Mrs Peters who should be seeing the headmaster at nine o'clock tomorrow.

You don't find out what actually happened for ages. Daisy has a lot of other business to get through first.

There's the Christmas list, which asks for a bike that fires torpedoes, a worm house with real worms and a quite fluffy hamster. There's Mum's method of posting it, which turns out to involve a man in a yellow jacket and a bonfire. Daisy watches her own words go up in orange sparks and is completely satisfied.

There's Gabby's front garden, with the blow-up Santa, the flashing Rudolph and the plastic elves that go hee-hee-hee at you. Daisy's mum calls it tacky. Daisy would like every single bit of it on her own lawn.

And there's the game where you take turns naming Christmassy things you love, which is impossible to lose, and which has to be abandoned twice because Mum keeps joining in and then singing carols.

The excitement itself gets described properly. It goes into your toes and your elbows and your eyelashes and up your jumper, and it makes your heart go bibbidy-bibbidy-bop. If you've got a child who becomes completely unreachable from about the first of December, you'll know exactly what she means.

Nothing in here will upset anybody. One thing worth a quick look first, though. Daisy is absolutely certain about Santa, and the bonfire post explanation is played entirely straight. If your reader is at the stage of asking careful questions, you might want to know that before you start reading it out loud.

The best bit is that Daisy never once accepts she did anything wrong. She has an explanation ready for everything, and every explanation is somebody else's fault.

What to read next

Once your reader has got the hang of her, Daisy and the Trouble with Maggots is in the library as well. That one takes her fishing with her Uncle Clive, and she is every bit as certain that the business with the catapult wasn't her doing either.