Santa has "gathered the strangest and worst" letters he's received. More than twenty letters in verse beg, threaten, complain, bargain, and ask for homework help. "(P.S. It's due tomorrow)." Phoebe wants a unicorn: "Don't tell me you can't. Don't say they're not real. / If reindeer can fly, I think you can deal." There's a letter from "The Parents" stating, "We break our backs to make this work / And YOU get all the credit." "The Committee for Elvish Rights" has demands, "Chris from Accounting" has questions, and "t-rex" asks, "can u pleez bring the dinoz bak?" The energetic digital collage illustrations play up the poems' outrageous absurdity.

Santa's ho-ho-ho turns harumph-harumph-harumph in the introduction to this cautionary collection of the most egregious missives he's received. Kicking off with rhyming quatrains, Santa gathers "the strangest and worst of these letters/ To highlight what you and your friends should resist." In the correspondence that follows, one child's request for a unicorn and another's for emergency homework-help sit alongside gripes from weary parents and frustrated employees ("Our dormitory's cold and bare./ We need vacations, dental care" note Santa's elves). San Vicente's images, digitally collaged with public domain works, visually introduce most of the individual letter-writers and provide each entry with a distinct typeface and illustration style. It's a work that readers will want to pore over before drafting their own notes to St. Nick. Human characters are portrayed with various skin tones, some fanciful.

"I pushed my cousin in the lake. / I ate my best friend's birthday cake. / With Christmas here, I feel the squeeze. / Oh, just this once, forgive me please." Gathered by Santa as examples of the sorts of correspondence he doesn't appreciate, these rhymed missives feature not only tardy expressions of remorse but also complaints about candy canes and stolen cookies, complaints from exhausted parents and mutinous elves, demands for dinosaurs or a unicorn ("Don't tell me you can't. Don't say they're not real. / If reindeer can fly, I think you can deal"), and even an extortion note, complete with a surreptitiously snapped image from the previous year of Santa picking his nose. Using yellowed Scotch tape in his collages to suggest that Santa has been collecting these for a long time, San Vicente attaches to patterned album pages letters that are variously typed or legibly handwritten on creased notepaper or stationery. These alternate with views of irritated or disingenuously virtuous-looking correspondents of diverse skin tones. A timely and cogent word to the wise.

Publisher: Bushel & Peck Books

Pub date: 2024-10-01

Length: 64 pages