Book description
Christmas comes but once a year. Luckily . . . The Christmas holiday
is, traditionally, a time when families gather together. In Ralph's
case this means ten or more relatives coming to stay, including
assorted aunts and uncles, nutty Great-Aunt Ida (the Home tells them
to be careful not to let her out) and his ghastly cousins: Titania in
her silly, sick-making frilly fairy dresses and the twins Sylvester
and Sylvia (it took until Easter last year before the family dog got
over them).
Jammed into one small house for three days of merriment and family
fun, with the tv on the blink and Mum on the verge of a breakdown, it
soon becomes obvious that, in this house, more definitely does
not mean merrier . . .
Anne Fine has been an acknowledged top author in the children's
book world since her first book was published in the mid l970s, and
has now written more than forty books and won virtually every major
award going, including the Carnegie Medal (more than once), the
Whitbread Children's Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the
Smarties Prize and others. The Children's Laureate from 2001-2003,
Anne is also very funny and young readers love her lack of hypocrisy
about the family and her honesty about how people can behave. She
lives in the North-East.
One of the sharpest and most humorous observers of the human
condition writing today for the young' School Librarian
'She is translated into 26 languages and has regularly won every
major children's literary award in the land, including the Carnegie
Medal twice and the Whitbread Children's Novel award twice . . . There
are few more influential, or more unfailingly intelligent, authors at
work' Scotsman
'A subversively wicked gift for exploring family tensions' Independent
