Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Posts from Your Archives – 2022 – Christmas and New Year Special – #Poem – How the Grinch Stole Our Christmas by Sue Wickstead

Since this series began in January 2018 there have been over 1200 Posts from Your Archives where bloggers have taken the opportunity to share posts to a new audience…

The topics have ranged from travel, childhood, recipes, history, family and the most recent series was #PotLuck where I shared a random selection of different topics.

This series is along the same lines and is a celebration of Christmas and New Year.

I do appreciate that this is not a religious festival for everyone but it is a time of year when families and friends come together and our thoughts turn to our hopes and wishes for the coming year. At the end of the post you can find out how to participate in this festive series.

Today teacher and children’s author Sue Wickstead shares a delightful poem.

When the Grinch came to our school

The Grinch came to our school
One cold wet day
He said no-one should have any fun
He stole our Christmas away!

He said that children must work,
Every single one
They’ve come to school to learn to write
And not to have any fun.

He looked into the cupboards
And inspected every book
He tutted to himself
And gave a dirty look.

The children felt very sad
But did as they were told
They carried on regardless
They were brave, they were bold.

Their PE was full of dancing
They even learnt to sing
The joy was there for all to see
You couldn’t fault a thing.

The Grinch came back to watch
To see what they had done
He took one look and said
“You must invite everyone.”

So, Christmas came regardless
Not with ribbons, bells or bows
It came from children’s hearts
As every parent knows.

©Sue Wickstead 2022

My thanks to Sue for sharing this delightful poem with us…

A small selection of books by Sue Wickstead

One of the reviews for The Christmas Play

M. Fraser 5.0 out of 5 stars A fun-filled look behind the scenes of the school play!

Every parent will be familiar with the Christmas Nativity, performed in schools across the country, but what about the parts you don’t get to see? This wonderful children’s book has shifted the focus from the (hopefully) polished performance we get to see to the dress rehearsal, the part that sends cold shivers down the spines of teachers everywhere!

Offering a different take on traditional Nativity story books, Sue Wickstead has cleverly woven in the key details of the story amongst the anticipated hitches that invariably happen at the rehearsal. Every page brings a new mishap and plenty of giggles to be had for kids and parents alike.

I’ve always admired the dedication of the teachers when it comes to the organisation of the Christmas play and with over twenty years of teaching experience under her belt author Sue will have done her fair share. I genuinely have no idea where they find the energy or patience required to direct and keep all the children in check – they should all be made saints! This story gives what I imagine is just a small insight into the things that can go wrong, however the show must go on and with a little gentle guidance from the teachers it all ends well.

My son and I both loved this book and I felt the illustrations really added to our enjoyment of the story. Bright and colourful they depict the humour perfectly. giving us plenty to talk about as we read together. The book is 36 pages long, however there isn’t much writing on each page which makes it ideal for those early readers with a little experience, especially with its large, clear font.

This book would be ideal to share with children who have a Christmas play in the pipeline or would just make a wonderful festive read to share over the holiday season. If you’re stuck on stocking filler ideas this fabulous tale would make the perfect gift – you can NEVER go wrong gifting a book! 

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon UK – And: Amazon US – More reviews: Goodreads – Website/Blog: Sue Wickstead – Facebook: Stories Sue – Facebook: Teacher Page – Twitter: @JayJayBus – LinkedIn: Sue Wickstead

About Sue Wickstead

Sue Wickstead is a teacher and an author with Award winning books.
Shortlisted in the Wishing Shelf Book awards. and has written children’s picture books with a bus theme. In addition, she has also written a photographic history book about the real bus behind her story writing.

Her bus stories are about a playbus. Have you ever been on a Playbus?
When Sue’s two children were young, they attended a playgroup on a bus, but not an ordinary bus taking you on a journey, exciting though this is, but a Playbus stuffed full of toys to capture their imagination!

For over 20 years, alongside her teaching career, she worked with the charity, the Bewbush Playbus Association.

As part of the committee she painted the bus, worked in the groups, helped raise the profile of the project and its work and was part of the team involved in raising funds to replace the old bus with a newer vehicle. This led her to write a photographic history book about it.

‘It really was a fun journey to be involved in’, said Sue. The bus really got into her blood and became a work of the heart.

Having written the history book Sue soon found that many children had never been on a bus before, let alone a ‘Playbus’ and they wanted to know more. So, she decided to write a fictional tale, his number plate JJK261, gave him his name.

‘Jay-Jay the Supersonic Bus,’ came out in print in 2014. It is the story behind the original project and is his journey from a scrap-yard to being changed into a playbus for children to play in. From Fact to fiction the bus journey continues.

I would love to share one of your posts from this festive season and it can be a poem, short story, non-fiction in the form of a recipe, personal story, family memory, New Year’s resolutions etc. It does not have to be current but from any year in your blogging journey.

It is an opportunity to showcase your writing skill to my readers and also to share on my social media. Which combined is around the 50,000 mark. If you are an author, your books will be mentioned too, along with their buy links and your other social media contacts.

How to feature in the series?

• All I need you to do is email me the link to the fiction or non-fiction post you have chosen either with aChristmas or New Year theme to (sally.cronin@moyhill.com)
• As I will be promoting your books as part of the post along with all your information and links so I will not be sharing direct marketing or self- promotional posts in the series.
• If you are an author I am sure you will have a page on your blog with the details, and an ‘about page’ with your profile and social media links (always a good idea anyway). I will get everything that I need.
• As a blogger I would assume that you have an ‘about page’ a profile photo and your links to social media.
• Copyright is yours and I will ©Your name on every post… and you will be named as the author in the URL and subject line.
• Previous participants are very welcome to take part again.
• Each post is reformatted for my blog and I don’t cut and paste, this means it might look different from your own post especially if you are using the block editor
• If I do share a post which contains mainly photographs I will share up to five and link back to the original post for people to view the rest.

N.B – To get the maximum benefit from your archive posts, the only thing I ask is that you respond to comments individually and share on your own social media.. thank you.