The Stink Before Christmas Book Review (age 3-6+) for Scholastic

The Stink Before Christmas is an especially festive book release from Scholastic. Written by Children's TV presenters Sam And Mark (Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes) and illustrated by Tom Knight, it is of course a retelling of Twas The Night Before Christmas - with just a little tweaking of the storyline. In Sam and Mark style...

We were sent a bonus item - a whoopee cushion. I never thought I'd pretend 'I don't know what I'm about to sit on' so many times in my life. This is child no.7, I can spot a whoopee cushion from the next room.

This is a bright, bold book, with big illustrations and plenty of colour. It all starts off so innocently...

And you soon get an idea of where this is going. It's a book for giggling, especially if you are around 5 years old. It's got only a couple of tricky words and a lot of repetition, so it's a good book for reading together with a child who is still learning.

Although it's a weeny bit rude with all of the mention of bottoms and wind, this is an innocent story and no-one comes to any harm.

At the back of the book is a double sided cardboard door hanger for Christmas Eve, and to warn approaching Mums who are about to enter the pit of doom....the small child's stinky bedroom!!

The Stink Before Christmas is recommended for age 3-6 years, but my boys are 7 and 9 and they both laughed aloud and really enjoyed reading it. I think you can expand the range more when it's a Christmas book - they'll both still happily read very young Christmas books when they're feeling festive.

The Stink Before Christmas is a glossy large scale paperback with 32 pages that is not for very, very nice and easily offended readers. Published by Scholastic Books, available now priced £6.99rrp.

We were sent our copy of The Stink Before Christmas for review