Lentil and the Mint: An Alternative Advent

With doting godparents and grandparents around ever ready to lavish chocolate and treats on my children I have decided to take a rather more high-brow approach to advent this year (don't you know...!) Forget the sweet treat calendar, this year it is a countdown of adventures. Throughout the year I have collected books from second hand shops and bought those we have borrowed time and time again from the library to make a collection of 24 'advent' tales. The boys will take turns to open one each morning and we will read it after bath that evening - although something tells me we wont wait that long. It may be too late to collect 24 books in time for Dec1st this year without blowing the Christmas budget out of the water and ordering them all from Amazon in one hit but you could borrow them from the library? After all it's the excitement of opening a new story each day isn't it? Here are the ones I chose:

1. A Home for Bird - Philip C Stead

2 .Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - Judith Viorst

3 .Cars and Trucks and Things That Go - Richard Scarry

4. Desmond the Dinosaur - Althea

5. Miffy at the Seaside - Dick Bruna

6. This is London - M Sasek

7. The Selfish Giant - Oscar Wilde

8. The Not So Scary Snorklum - Paul Bright + Jane Chapman

9. My Green Day - Melanie Walsh

10. The Yellow House - Blake Morrison

11. Ferocious Wild Beasts - Chris Wormell

12. The Thorn in the Lions Paw - Louise Maxwell