#TuesdayBookBlog The Christmas Tale of Elaine Gale by Daniel Thompson @elaine_gale2017 #Book Review #Christmas

Title: The Christmas Tale of Elaine Gale

Author: Daniel Thompson

Category: Children/Christmas

My Rating: 5 Star

My Review:

I discovered this book via the Book Connectors group after the author joined and introduced himself. Always a sucker for a Christmas book I quickly grabbed a copy of his new release and devoured it in one sitting.

The Christmas Tale of Elaine Gale is an alternative tale for a children’s book. Yes, there are kids involved, Santa makes an entrance, and it’s the happy seasonal ending all readers hope for. However, this unique story also includes humour, an evil queen, and naughty parents. What’s not to love!

The opening page sums it up perfectly.

Before we start, dear faint of heart, I give you warning fair.

For in this rhyme, from time to time, you might get quite a scare.

This Christmas story, gets quite gory, so if you are the type.

To squeal and squirm at bugs and worms, it’s one you may not like.

But if you wish, if you insist, I’ll tell a tale I know.

Of an evil queen, who’s very mean, and entirely made of snow.

The characters are Ben, Daniel, and Claire (ages 11, 10, and 7) who set about building a snow man. Young Claire names their new creation Elaine, much to the horror of her brothers.

“How?” said Dan “does a snow man, have a name that isn’t male?”

“Well he’s a she, a she like me, and her name is Elaine Gale.”

Got to say, I love Claire for her strong girl power goals. The young protagonist is also a keen wordsmith and weaves a scary tale around their new snow queen.

As with all good Children’s books, the evil queen tends to come to life and wreak havoc leaving our poor little heroes with a town to save on Christmas Eve.

The rhyming is beautifully done, and I chuckled along at quite a few points. The illustrations are stunning and really bring the story to life.

I can highly recommend this Christmas tale for young and old alike and look forward to reading more from the author in the future.

Blurb:

In this book that you hold, a true story unfolds,
Of a Christmas not too long ago.
Where I’m lead to believe, on a cold Christmas eve,
Three Siblings played out in the snow.

As all children do, when the snow bustles through,
They built an acquaintance to scale.
But not a snow man, as suggested by Dan,
They built a snow queen, Elaine Gale

And they started to tell, how she’d cast an old spell,
For every child to be cruel.
For if no names exist, on Santa’s nice list,
There would be no Christmas at all.

But little did they know, as they played in the snow,
Before the night was through.
That story they told, would find life in the cold.
And every word would come true.

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