Product Description

When Alice’s Uncle Sam brings home a mysterious calendar that’s short on
chocolate but big on surprises, she is thrown into an advent she never
dreamed of. Codes arrive by text message and open the doors in the
calendar, drawing Alice and Sam into fantastical new worlds that are
wondrous, frightening and beautiful - and strangely familiar.

Packed with codes and secrets, and inviting us to explore the deeper
meanings of Christmas, this enthralling and touching tale can be read on
many levels, and will be loved by adults and children alike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23555 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From the Publisher
A fantastic cross-over book - will appeal to both the
religious and general trade, as well as to adults and children alike.
Will work well in the Christmas Market.
Steven Croft is a well-respected and increasingly influential name.

From the Back Cover
When Alice's Uncle Sam brings home a mysterious calendar that's
short on chocolate but big on surprises, she is thrown into an advent she
never dreamed of. Codes arrive by text message and open the doors in the
calendar, drawing Alice and Sam into fantastical new worlds that are
wondrous, frightening and beautiful - and strangely familiar.

About the Author
Steven Croft is Archbishops' Missioner and the author of Ministry in Three
Dimensions and Transforming Communities (both DLT).

Customer Reviews

Better Than Chocolate!
My wife loves chocolate, so there's never a problem knowing what to give her for a treat - and the perfect treat for a chocolate lover in the run up to Christmas is one of those chocolate advent calendars. But this year she got an advent calendar with a difference: this book by Stephen Croft.

Fortunately for me, Sue loves books as much as she loves chocolate, and this one got her top rating: "even better than chocolate." It's a remarkable story about a remarkable advent calendar which, instead of doors with chocolate hidden behind them, features buttons at the bottom: every day Uncle Sam receives a code via his mobile phone, and when these codes are punched into the buttons, Uncle Sam and his niece, Alice, find themselves going off on all sorts of adventures.

And for Sue it punched all the right buttons: "It's like Sophie's World meets the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," she said. Highly recommended, perfect for daily advent reading... if you can resist the temptation to open the next door too early! Even better, it's non-fattening too!

Great idea; poor execution
I am a Christian. I have children. I love Christmas. I wanted to like this book as I read it to my two youngest sons in the rup-up to Christmas. And I did like it in parts.

An abandoned mother, Megs, lives with her daughter Alice and brother Sam and over the 24 days of advent the Alice and her Uncle Sam are transported into adventures through each of the doors in a mysterious advent calendar.

But they aren't really adventures. Alice and Sam meet people - sometimes Bible characters - and see things which allude to Bible themes, such as a new road being built. Sometimes the themes are explictly Christian: Jesus dying on the cross appears about half way through.

But these 24 'adventures' lead nowhere. They appear to be unconnected events. Granted, on the 24th day, Alice and Uncle Sam are taken to where you might expect them to be taken on Christmas Eve, but there is no sense that the previous 23 days were leading there.

Meanwhile in the real world things are happening - and the plot is a little more substantial there. It involves a romantic liason for Alice's mother Megs; a resolution of the situation between Sam and a woman he has been seeing; and Alice being involved in a prank at school. Also, through the 24 days Alice and Sam do change - although it is not quite clear how or why, it is certainly not explicitly through the transforming power of the gospel. Indeed, at the end of the book Alice and Sam are 'better' people, but is it this being better that will help them on that final day when we all have to stand before God?

And the church in the book's real world is dominated by women - and it is the women in Alice's family who have the stronger faith. While this is for much of the church on the UK it does not make for inspiring reading as the men are relegated to spiritual stereotypes and the message is subtly reinforced, to my sons and to others, that church is a 'women's thing'.

Brilliant exploration of Advent themes
This book is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I bought it on a whim last year, to read on the train; the train broke down for about three hours, and all I thought was 'thank goodness, I'm going to have time to finish this before getting home'! How many books would make you grateful for a delayed journey?
Buy it and read it, then give it to everyone you know to read, and buy extra to give to any teenagers you know as an early Christmas present.