The Miracle on Ebenezer Street

Catherine Doyle's The Miracle on Ebenezer Street is a magical Christmas story for 9 year olds about a boy whose dad has cancelled Christmas.

What happens

George Bishop is ten (and four months). For three years there's been no Christmas at all at 7 Ebenezer Street. No tree, no stockings, no carols, not even the adverts on telly. His dad Hugo runs the family property business and works every single day.

Luckily George has Nana Flo. She's Irish, she sings everywhere, and she claims to have spent thirty years as a secret agent (George is fairly sure she was a singing teacher). Two days before Christmas she smuggles him off to the Christmas fair in Hyde Park, with a moustache made of tinsel for a disguise.

At the end of a row of stalls there's a little shop with a sign. Strictly No Grown-ups Allowed. Inside are crackers with a whole universe in them and a shelf of snow globes called Last-Minute Miracles. In one of them is a lopsided snowman George knows very well.

He knows it because he built it. With his mum and dad, on the last Christmas Eve they had together.

That night George makes a wish on the snow globe. And his great-great-grandfather Walter climbs out of the oil painting over the fireplace, complaining about his tie.

It's properly funny. Walter is rude to everyone, the cat is appalled, and the Devon countryside from the painting spills into the living room. George's very grown-up dad ends up waving a golf club at a baby deer. Who wouldn't want to see that?

There are lots of little nods to A Christmas Carol for grown-ups reading along. A shopkeeper called Marley, a newspaper from 1843, and an empty cracker that everyone calls a Scrooge. Your reader doesn't need to know Dickens to enjoy it, but it's a nice way in if they're curious.

Something to be ready for, though. The sadness sits right at the front. George's mum died on Christmas Eve three years ago, in a car on an icy road, and the first chapters are about how raw that still is. His dad shouts. George cries in his room.

If your reader has lost someone, especially recently, this might be a lot. But if they like a Christmas story with a big heart, plenty of jokes and a lump in the throat, this is a very special one.

What to read next

If they're after more Christmas magic, try A Boy Called Christmas. It's the story of how Father Christmas began, back when he was an ordinary boy called Nikolas in Finland who'd only ever had two presents, one of them a doll made from a turnip.