Heidi Heckelbeck 9 – Heidi Heckelbeck and the Christmas Surprise

Wanda Coven's Heidi Heckelbeck and the Christmas Surprise is a short, cosy chapter book for 6 year olds about a small witch who borrows something she shouldn't have.

What happens

Heidi has written her letter to Santa. She wants one thing, a book called Princess Charming, and she has also asked him to confirm whether he really does see her when she's sleeping.

Then she opens her mum's jewellery box and finds a silver charm bracelet. Every charm works. A jack-in-the-box that pops open. A tiny sunglasses case with tiny sunglasses inside. A little toaster that makes toast. (Her brother Henry wants the pearls for a lasso, which tells you how that house runs.)

Mum says the bracelet will be hers when she's ten. Always ask permission first, she says.

You can see where this is heading. There's a dressing-up game, a snowball fight, a snowman called Cool Dude, and by the time Lucy has gone home the bracelet is not on Heidi's wrist any more. A foot of snow falls overnight. The snowplough gets to it before Heidi does.

What makes this lovely at six is how ordinary the panic is. Heidi doesn't want the bracelet back nearly as much as she wants her mum not to find out. She hides it in her pocket at school. She sits at her aunt's kitchen table with gingerbread she can't really enjoy. Who hasn't broken something and then quietly hoped it would sort itself out?

The magic is small and it goes wrong, which is the best part. There's a Book of Spells with a Jewellery Repair page. Heidi mixes the spell up carefully and uses the red sugar her mum had left out for Christmas biscuits. Rust. Just rust.

It's American, so it's Mom and candy canes, but there's nothing in that a six-year-old will stumble over. The chapters are very short and it moves quickly. Ideal for a couple at bedtime, or for a newish reader who wants a whole book they can actually finish.

This one sits a good way into a series, although Heidi's secret is explained inside it and you don't need anything else first.

What to read next

If it goes down well, Heidi Heckelbeck and the Cookie Contest is an earlier one in the library. That's a school baking competition, a family recipe, and Heidi absolutely refusing to let anyone help her make it.