Frost Fair

Carol Ann Duffy's Frost Fair is set on a snowy day in London during the severe winter of 1683. Its narrator wanders across a makeshift city built on the frozen Thames, where hundreds of tents stand around fires glowing on the ice and crowds celebrate together. Along the way she encounters jugglers, dancing bears and fortune tellers, and comes upon a cheerful wedding.

She drifts into the company of people she has only just met, and the group settles down for a night beneath the stars on the river. As they sleep, none of them can know who will be looking down on them when the morning light returns.

Duffy wrote the poem as a Christmas piece, drawing on the frost fairs held on the Thames during the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age. It aims to capture both the inventiveness of a great city and the drama of the season. David De Las Heras provides the illustrations, and the book is aimed at readers looking for a holiday season title.