Cover of The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

With Halloween out of the way the shops have firmly set themselves to Christmas mode and my mind is also in planning mode. What presents should we buy? When are we going to buy them?

But it’s also time to think about pre-Christmas traditions. So for us that’s decorations (not much more than a tree) and advent calendars. And, for the last couple of years, a particular book.

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder is a children’s book split into 24 chapters, one for each day of Advent. It features Joachim who has an unusual advent calendar and a story within a story of Elisabet who is on a journey across Europe and time.

It is not an especially long book (256 pages) and could be read as a normal novel but we enjoy reading a chapter a day and savouring it through advent.

Buy at Waterstones

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