Booky Advent Calendar: Christmas Eve - "ANNUALS!"

Every single year without fail from about the age of 0 to about the age of 15 I got an annual for Christmas...
So it goes without saying on our last review post of 2016 for the last day on our Booky Advent Calendar we've got to recommend three fantastic annuals - and I'm ecstatically happy to see that the three annuals I was most commonly bought as a kid are still being published today in virtually the same hardback format as they always were.

First up, The Dandy Annual which brings together all the classic characters from "The comic I always bought instead of the Beano".

Korky the Cat, Desperate Dan, Beryl the Peril and even Brassneck are all in this weighty tome. Most of them might've jumped ship to find their way into the Beano Comic but this is where they started out.

The 2017 annual is full of brilliant strips and awesomeness personified but bang up to date (I mean there's even a selfie stick on the cover, for goodness sake!)

Of course you can't have one without the other so there's always...

"The Beano Annual 2017" with Dennis the Menace, Gnasher, Walter, The Bash Street Kids and all your favourite strips from The Beano Comic all leaping out of that eyecatching cover ready to keep you (and, yeah sure, your kids if you're crazy enough to let them near it) busy well into Boxing Day and beyond.

Can the Queen's Speech (it'll be a total snorefest this year because 2016 has sucked for just about everything except brilliant books!) and dig into this beauty instead.

Last but not least...

Well this one was always in my stocking, even when I'd long outgrown the freakish puppet version of the character that us 70s kids had to endure.

Now Rupert's all CGI, I'm so glad to see that The Rupert Book is still being published, reviving all those brilliant strips from the original newspaper comics and annuals of yesteryear...

There's just something SO GOOD about Rupert Annuals. I was always completely in love with the ultra-detailed scenes in each comic strip, the inventiveness of the stories, and of course the choice between zipping through the rhyming versions of each story or reading the 'long form' non-rhyming versions.

With games and puzzles too, this is the epitome of a classic annual and though the TV show has long since become a travesty of uncanny-valley-CGI nonsense, the books are just as fantastic as they ever were.

Make sure you nab an annual this year and stick it in your child's stocking, it's the best booky pressie you can give any kid!

That about wraps it for us for this year. We're taking a wee festive break but we may be back between now and the New Year with our Book of the Year and Publisher of the Year winners announcements so stay tuned for that somewhere around the end of December.

A huge huge huge huge huge thanks to all the hard working authors, artists, publishers, tirelessly wonderful PR folk and awesome book bloggers and reviewers who have been brilliant in 2016. Let's make 2017 even better!

Have a HAPPY CHRISTMAS from The ReadItDaddy Team!