
When their car breaks down, the Shepherd family have to stay in a hotel called Forever Xmas. Here they celebrate Christmas every day of the year, complete with Christmas dinner, Santa Claus, and Christmas presents. Complications arrive when Mr Angel lands up in a tree, when the police arrive looking for the Starrs, and when Santa Claus escapes in a bus. This is an imaginative and very lively comic novel by the award-winning author, Geraldine McCaughrean.
Author

Geraldine McCaughrean was born in 1951 and brought up in North London. She studied at Christ Church College of Education, Canterbury and worked in a London publishing house for 10 years before becoming a full-time writer in 1988. She has written over 120 books, 50 short plays for schools, and a radio play. Her adult novels include Fires’ Astonishment (1990) and The Ideal Wife (1997), but she is best-known for her children’s books. She writes for children of all ages, from first readers, picture books, and younger children’s books, to children’s novels, which include A Little Lower than the Angels (1987), Gold Dust (1993) and Not the End of the World (2004), each of which have won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, making her the only writer to have won this award three times. Geraldine McCaughrean has also written several collections of stories, including bible stories and fairy tales. She specialises in the retelling of classic tales such as The Canterbury Tales (1984), The Odyssey (1993), Moby Dick (1996) and El Cid (1989) and of myths and legends from around the world. These books include The Orchard Book of Greek Myths (1992) and The Orchard Book of Roman Myths (1999). Geraldine McCaughrean lives in Berkshire. Her book, Not the End of the World, is currently being adapted for the stage. White Darkness (2005), was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Children's Book Award. In 2005, she was chosen to write the official sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published in 2006.