Review: Mog's Christmas Calamity - Judith Kerr.Review: Upon the Midnight Clear - Sherrilyn Kenyon.Review: Dream Chaser - Sherrilyn Kenyon.Judith Kerr is a wonderful illustrator and she captures the chaos cats can cause perfectly. I have fond memories of reading the Mog series to my younger brother and this newest story is just as cute as the others. Judith Kerr, HarperCollins and Sainsbury's agreed to donate all profits from this book (and the adorable plush Mog that goes with it!) to Save the Children who will be using the money to improve child literacy in the UK. I don't review many children's books but after watching the Sainsbury's Christmas advert about a million times I couldn't resist buying a copy of Mog's Christmas Calamity, especially since it's raising money for such a great cause. campaign of which they are a founding member. The money donated to save the Children will go towards their UK literacy work and will also give funding to support the aims of the national Read On. Judith Kerr, HarperCollins and Sainsbury's will donate all of their profits from the sale of this book to Save the Children to improve child literacy in the UK. Since she first appeared in Mog the Forgetful Cat, Mog has become everyone's favourite family cat and her adventures have delighted countless children worldwide. But when Mog wakes up, calamity strikes! Can Mog save Christmas Day? It feels like someone looking back with pleasure at the past, the edges slightly blunted.Mog and the Thomas family are looking forward to Christmas.

This softening is, in itself, rather moving. Gone are the rich colours and clean lines of the 1972 model, replaced instead with the soft focus pastels that define Kerr’s later work.

So how did the accompanying book, Mog’s Christmas Calamity match up to my unreasonably high expectations? Asides from anything else it’s a remarkable achievement for a woman of 92 to turn out an entire book in just three months – and then star in the accompanying advert. So not actually that much like my childhood. Though truth be told, my dad never wore kipper ties, and he loathes cats with an inexplicable fervour. The period setting (1970s middle England) with paper decorations, kipper ties and wind up mice was essentially my childhood. Mog’s Christmas isn’t just my favourite Mog book it is also my second favourite Christmas book, after Father Christmas. The ad is in many ways a Mog’s greatest hits, with references to books including Mog in the Dark, with its surreal shock troop of toothed birds.Īnd even better, the shadow of the walking tree from Mog’s Christmas looms large over the proceedings. Whatever the status of her mortality, Mog is well and truly alive, causing more sublime chaos in the glorious new short film by the makers of the equally brilliant Paddington movie. Well she has had cause to reconsider, explaining that the books were never written in chronological order, so this just another story in the life of Mog. ‘It wasn’t so much that I wanted to kill her off,’ she has said ‘as that I wanted to say something about dying and being remembered. The return of the permanently befuddled tabby cat Mog came as a complete surprise, particularly as Judith Kerr had famously retired her most famous creation in the 2002 book Goodbye Mog. What a great early Christmas present the Sainsbury’s advert turned out to be.

Mogs calamity christmas