Cat Family Christmas: A Lift the Flap Advent Book by Lucy Brownridge, illustrated by Eunyoung Seo

Title: Cat Family Christmas: A Lift the Flap Advent Book

Author: Lucy Brownridge, illustrated by Eunyoung Seo

Genre: Christmas

Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

Published: 1^st November 2022

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 24

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: Count down to Christmas with the Cat Family in this lift-the-flap advent book with more than 140 doors to open, as you help them decorate, bake and prepare the house for the holiday season.

Count down the twelve days til Christmas in this delightful advent book. With a nod to nostalgic Victorian advent calendars, open up tiny but sturdy flap ‘doors’ on each one of the 24 pages to reveal little details and surprises.

Peer inside the cupboard doors and different-sized tins in the busy Cat Family kitchen to find the missing ingredients for the cake. Open all the front doors on the street when the Cat Family go carol singing.

This is a whimsical Christmas book that gives the Victorian advent calendar tradition a contemporary twist for advent calendar door–hungry hands. Every page is rich with Liberty print–style pick-and-mix patterns and William Morris–inspired friezes.

The Cat Family are full of character and personality, and the picture painted of the holiday season in this charming picture book will fill you and your family with Christmas cheer!

Join the Cat Family as they count down to Christmas over twelve days and see what you can find as you lift the flaps to discover what they’re collecting food, presents, fetching family, or going carol singing and putting up the tree. Each page has several flaps – with over 140 across the whole book, accompanied by a beautiful story. Lucy Brownridge has created a beautiful story about how the cat family celebrates Christmas – simple, but evocative and beautiful words that give a sense of what a family Christmas might be like, set against the backdrop of a Victorian Christmas and the traditions. The story is accompanied by delightful pictures with the flaps by Eunyoung Seo that bring the story and Lucy’s world of Victorian era cats and Christmas to life. It is the kind of book that can be read in one sitting, whilst exploring the flaps, or perhaps, if you and your little ones are patient enough, you can read one page a day or night over twelve days as you tick off each day. The flaps are joyous and wonderful for readers aged four and older – smaller fingers may need help to lift the delicate flaps, even I had trouble with some, but the delights that await you and your reading companion or imagination under these flaps is beautiful and engaging.

What I loved about this book was how inviting it was. It really pulls you in, and lets you enter the world of the Cat family as they prepare for their Christmas with their traditions, their tree, their cooking, and everything about it. It’s a delightful story that shows readers old and young what the magic of Christmas is – being with family, preparing, giving each other Christmas wishes – everything about it is captured beautifully in this book, right up until Christmas Eve, showing one of many ways to celebrate Christmas, if indeed you do. It is the kind of book that invites us into a world and gives another delightful depiction of Christmas. Yes, it is one we may be familiar with, but it is always interesting to see how a traditional vision of Christmas is incorporated into a story and used to create a story.

The character and personality of the cats dances off the pages and its truly magical – it was delightful to read this story. I think it will be really special tradition for families and people young and old. It is one to be treasured, and I had great fun reading it and exploring the flaps, and hope that others do too.