Another glorious wintry book chock full of magic adds to our festive Chapter Book celebration and a worthy entry on our Booky Advent Calendar for Day 13.

Here's "Winter Magic", another utterly amazing anthology of stories curated by Abi Elphinstone.

Abi's own story "The Snow Dragon" tails off a superb collection of stories from some of the greats in children's literature.

Folk such as  Michelle Magorian, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jamila Gavin, Berlie Doherty, Katherine Woodfine, Piers Torday, Lauren St John, Amy Alward, Michelle Harrison and Emma Carroll contribute a wondrous mix of stories, with dragons and elves, mountains and magic and of course a wonderful dusting of festive snow.

It's the sort of book that's perfect for curling up with, armed with a huge mug of cocoa (with marshmallows of course, as Charlotte quite rightly just added!)

"Winter Magic" by Abi Elphinstone, Michelle Magorian, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jamila Gavin, Berlie Doherty, Katherine Woodfine, Piers Torday, Lauren St John, Amy Alward, Michelle Harrison and Emma Carroll is out now, published by Simon and Schuster (kindly supplied for review). 

My late Nan was always a great believer in stories. She instilled in us a love of books, and had a million and one stories of her own. The reason I mention her is that October (her birth month) sees the launch of a fantastic new magazine for children. "Scoop" magazine gathers together a brilliant combination of book snippets, book news, comic strips, puzzles, activities and of course - most importantly of all - stories from far and wide.

We've been lucky enough to have been sent issue one to take a look at and we're both really impressed. For me, it's like having a fantastic magazine version of one of my fave book shows from childhood, "The Book Tower" which had Tom Baker spellbindingly telling us all about new books and story releases.

For Charlotte, it was the lure of reading about books and stories that she hadn't heard of, hungrily devouring chunks of fantastic tales as well as poetry and comics.

The whole magazine is beautifully illustrated throughout by some of the top talent working in children's publishing today. With contributors like Neil Gaiman, Abi Elphinstone, Laura Dockrill and Gareth P. Jones amongst many, many others, it's like a who's who of all the amazingly talented folk who are making the brightest and best children's literature for us to pluck from bookshelves and lose ourselves in.

It's brilliant to find an ad-and-plastic-tat-free magazine devoted to our great passion - stories and reading.

"Scoop" will primarily be sold through subscription and costs just £40 for an annual ten-issue subscription, with schools able to take out an annual subscription of ten issues (with 5 copies each issue) for £160. "Scoop" will also be available through selected independent book retailers from November.

Details on the magazine and the subscription charges can be found on the website:

http://www.scoopthemag.co.uk

As we said, we think this is an utterly brilliant magazine and we wish them huge success with this - not least of all because there's always room for a magazine that's as passionate about stories and books as we are!