Supertato: We Wish You a Veggie Christmas!

Supertato: We Wish You a Veggie Christmas! has been a huge hit with my Reception class. From the moment we opened it, the children were completely engaged and excited to see Supertato and friends in a festive setting.

The Christmassy theme worked beautifully, creating lots of excitement and familiarity while still offering plenty of surprises. The illustrations are a real highlight. They are bright, detailed and full of humour, and the children loved spotting clues and small visual jokes hidden in the pictures. There was a huge amount to discuss and infer from the illustrations alone, which led to rich conversations about characters' intentions, problem-solving and what might happen next. The children were particularly keen to explain their thinking using evidence from the pictures.

The story prompted lots of spontaneous responses and comments from the class, showing just how invested they were. It supported prediction, inference and speaking skills extremely well, and the festive storyline made it perfect for shared reading in the run-up to Christmas.

Overall, this is a fun, engaging and thoughtfully illustrated book that works brilliantly in an Early Years classroom. It encourages discussion, laughter and careful looking, and it’s a story the children were eager to revisit again and again.

Picture book / Reviewed by Linda Canning, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 5+

If you love Supertato and his friends, you are going to adore this new Christmas story - but watch out because Evil Pea is back and he is trying to ruin Christmas with his Size-o-riser and his evil plans!

Evil Pea is angry because he does not like Christmas and all its happiness as he watches Supertato and the veggies preparing for the festive season. With an evil plan and his new Size-o-riser, he shrinks them all and makes them into tiny baubles and sticks them high up on the Christmas tree so that he can get CHRISTMAS CANCELLED!!!!!!!!!   Supertato and his veggie friends must find a way to escape from the tree and stop Evil Pea.

This new Supertato story by the talented duo Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet is a laugh-out-loud story for the Christmas season. This book was read to a class of six and seven-year-olds who are familiar with the Supertato stories, however this book can be read without having prior knowledge of these characters.

Supertato: We Wish You a Veggie Christmas! shows the power of evil and good in a fun way, with children being able to engage in the text and its happenings as the veggies try to save Christmas. It can be used to explore the use of speech in stories, with children being able to identify the spoken words and find some new words in the text instead of 'said', such as 'bellowed', 'stammered' etc.

Children will love this story about Supertato and his veggie gang, the fabulous illustrations and, of course, the evil antics of Evil Pea! A wonderful, hilarious story which was given 5 stars!!!

Picture book / Reviewed by Maria Aldred, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 5+