Catherine Doyle’s writing sparkles in a wonderful reworking of Dickens’ classic ‘A Christmas Carol’. The Miracle on Ebenezer Street is a great big festive hug of a book that filled me with Christmas spirit. Ever since the death of his wife on Christmas Eve three years ago, Hugo Bishop has had nothing to do with Christmas and has banned all festivities from the Bishop household. Hugo’s son George longs for the fond memories of past Christmases where love, happiness and colour filled the house. He is on a desperate search for the Christmas magic that left the family home on the night his mother died and a search for the father that he used to know - the one that loved to live and not the grey and sullen broken-shell of a man that now resides with him at 7 Ebenezer Street. On a secret trip out to Winter Wonderland with his Nana Flo, George finds himself in Old Marley’s Curiosity Shop. Old Marley’s is a magical Christmas haven where the shelves are piled high with trinkets and crackers just begging to be popped. The shop is everything Christmas should be and George’s eyes are twinkling like the Christmas magic that he is surrounded by. In the shop, he finds a snow-globe that seems to show a winter scene that he recognises from a past Christmas. And this is where the magic (and just a little bit of mayhem) begins. With a shake of the snow-globe, George and his reluctant father are transported to various Christmases and visions of the past, present and future.
How many shakes of the snow-globe will it take to show his father what is important in life? Will there be enough magic in the snow-globe to change his father’s ways or is George doomed to a life without colour, without Christmas and without the father he so desperately wants back… Catherine Doyle packs a lot into what is a relatively short read, I read it in an afternoon. She tells a magical Christmas story full of warmth and love whilst exploring how the old and young deal with the loss of a loved one. There are plenty of nods to the original work of Dickens through street names, characters, a humbug sweet and the year 1843. Like a Christmas stocking, Catherine has filled The Miracle on Ebenezer Street with all the best bits of Christmas - roasting turkey, sprouts, crackers, snow, an adorable Elf on the Shelf named Tricksie, Randolph the purple reindeer and plenty of love, magic and Christmas cheer. Alex's illustrations, that feature throughout, are delightful too. We could all do with a bit of Old Marley’s Christmas magic and The Miracle on Ebenezer Street will leave readers feeling all cosy and Christmassy. I will be keeping on the shelf to read each year, curling up on the sofa with a hot-chocolate and a candy-cane. Recommended for 9+.
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