Santa Duck is a picture book written and illustrated by David Milgrim.
Nicholas Duck loves Christmas, and he is happy to try on the new Santa hat that's mysteriously delivered to his house. But when his friends see him and immediately launch into their Christmas lists, he doesn't know what to do . . . until he runs into Santa himself.
I read a lot of Christmas books. My 7 year old brings home at least one Christmas book a week the entire year with the exception of one or two Halloween books that pull him away from all things Christmas. I can say without hesitation: there are a lot of strange Christmas books out there. The Christmas books that usually fall short for me are the ones that suffer from being too original.
David Milgrim's Santa Duck manages to blend cute Christmas traditions with an original story.
In Santa Duck, Nicholas Duck sets out to find Santa before it's too late to submit his Christmas wishlist. As he's heading out he finds a present on his doorstep. "Whoa, baby!" Thus begins the hilarious dialogue in Milgrim's illustrations.
The present contains a Santa coat and hat. At first, Nicholas is very happy to have been given such a wonderful gift.
As Nicholas goes in search of Santa, every animal he sees believes him to be Santa Duck. He becomes increasingly frustrated as each animal recites their long Christmas wishlists.
The genius of this book is the dialogue bubbles between the animals. I wasn't a huge fan of the storyline between Nicholas and Santa. I wanted there to be more of a point as to why Nicholas was chosen to help Santa gather Christmas lists, but the humor amongst the animals more than made up for it. My kids and I had a lot of laughs. Santa Duck also embraces the idea that getting great gifts is awesome.
Even though I categorize Santa Duck with some of the other strange Christmas books we've read, I recommend it for the laughs alone. It's a fun read.
7/10: Recommended Read
No comments:
Post a Comment