The Snowman

A boy builds a snowman on Christmas Eve, and at midnight it climbs out of the garden and into his life. There's no dialogue, just Raymond Briggs's soft pencil-crayon drawings, a night-time tour of the house (the freezer is a highlight), a flight over the rooftops and a party at the North Pole. It is gentle, wordless and quietly devastating, and Walking in the Air still gets everyone in the room sniffing by the final scene. Short enough for tired little ones, sad enough that adults will pretend they've got something in their eye.