Mess Monsters at Christmas by Beth Shosan and Piers Harper (Worthwhile Books)

Now here's a rather nice and somewhat obscure children's christmas picture book that was nestled amongst a brace of fuzzy furry christmas animal titles in our fantastic local library. "Mess Monsters at Christmas" is a tale that children will absolutely love (because of the very naughty monsters) and adults will wholly identify with, particularly on christmas morning when the frenetic multi-tasking sees your otherwise pristine house turned into a wrapping-paper-covered sticky selection-box melted scene of utter devastation.

Poor mum starts to feel Christmas slipping away from her, and that only means one thing. The Mess Monsters are not too far away. Playing football with carefully wrapped presents, chewing candy canes and leaving sticky monster pawprints everywhere, trampling the tree and even threatening cute little teddy bears. Eeek!

Thankfully the children pitch in to help and soon bring the mess monsters under control, and they actually start to become useful helpful little monsters instead! Hooray!

Beth Shosan's excellent bouncy text with some brilliant monsters drawn by Piers Harper make this a bit of a lost classic but if you do spy it in the library stack, it's a nice breath of fresh air. Just make sure you pay close attention to how you can rein in your own little christmas monsters as the festive period fast approaches (47 sleeps to go, YIKES!)

Charlotte's best bit: The brave teddy trying to stand up to the very naughty destructive monsters, protecting the angel on the top of the tree

Daddy's favourite bit: A nice piece of wry observation about those little 'monsters' we all know and love!