'On the night before Christmas, A child in a house, As the whole family slept, Behaved just like a mouse ... ' It's the night before Christmas and a young girl creeps down the stairs, determined to find out for certain whether Santa is real ... But try as she might, she can't keep awake and is soon fast asleep. She doesn't stir, even when Santa and his reindeer land on her roof-top - but then, when he bursts out of her fireplace, she wakes to a room filled with magic. As she watches him fly off into the night, she knows that she will never forget this sight because, at Christmas, the best gift of all is belief. In 1822 CLEMENT MOORE WROTE a poem about Christmas Eve for his children. 'The Night Before Christmas' soon became a treasured Christmas story. Now one of our best-loved poets has rewritten the poem for the twenty-first century. Full of warmth and wit, with sparkling illustrations, here is a magical book that will be read again and again on long winter nights.
Author
Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold this position. Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.
