Who Is The Real Santa? A Christmas Countdown

This advanced picture book is designed to function as a “countdown to Christmas” with children reading a “chapter” (i.e. a page) for each day of December to enhance anticipation before the big day. The story begins on December 1st as Elfwood, manager of gift wrapping at the North Pole, prepares to present his new invention (talking wrapping paper) to his boss, Santa. But, much to Elfwood and all the other elves’ surprise ,“hordes of Santas” appear. After panicking, Elfwood questions the Santas as to which is the real Santa Claus to which all of them raise their hands. To sort the imposter Santas from the real one, the elves devise a questionnaire and begin interrogating each Santa, one by one.

While the committees are busily eliminating one fraud Santa at a time, at Santa’s house, three elves sneak into Santa’s bathroom in the hopes of playing a prank on the missing legendary figure. Unnoticed by the prankster elves, the gingerbread cookies in the pantry are attempting to stage a coup in the absence of the real Santa Claus. Led by their king, the gingerbread cookies make their way to the elves’ workshop where they begin to sabotage the elves’ handiwork by subtly messing with the toys there and rendering all tools unusable. Fortunately, the gingerbread cookies’ efforts are stopped when the reindeers escape their pen and the gingerbread cookies must flee for fear of being eaten. Eventually, the elves corral the reindeer back inside their pen and return to their Santa interrogations, completely oblivious of the gingerbread cookies’ plan.

The gingerbread cookies continue their campaign for power, next focusing on attaining the “nice list”, but, when they locate the list, they notice all their names successively disappearing from it, with the meaning being that they have no longer been deemed worthy of getting gifts this Christmas. The cookies panic, and the gingerbread king decides that he must tamper with the naughty list and remove all the cookies names, but he finds the box more heavily guarded than anticipated. The king eventually manages to open the box only to find a note from Santa that reassures the king that being on the naughty list is not a permanent state of being and that he is doing well by his people. Armed with this information, the king rallies the cookies to instead work on getting back on the nice list by helping Mrs. Claus with baking in the kitchen.

In the midst of accidental fireworks set off by the prankster elves, the true Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus return to all the wreckage with Santa revealing that the reason he was absent was that he was surprising his wife by secretly joining her on her trip. When questioning the fraudulent Santas, the true Santa realizes that they were unintentionally summoned by a poorly planned selfie he posted on “Jinglebook”, declaring himself “on vacation” and wondering “who can take my place?” Embarrassed by all their mistakes, Santa, the elves and the gingerbread cookies all return to their work with a postscript to readers apologizing for any mistakes made in this year’s presents. The imposter Santas, while initially disheartened, go to schools and hospitals to spread joy to the children there regardless of their lack of magical powers.

Valérie Fontaine’s humorous, quirky prose keeps each chapter entertaining, building mystery and suspense for readers wondering how everything will sort itself out by Christmas Day. Chapters are ended with cliffhangers, forcing readers to wonder how the story will resolve and speculate how they would solve the problems themselves. On pages dominated by text, Mika’s illustrations provide sweet and friendly glimpses at characters decked out in their colourful Christmas finery. Mika’s full-page spreads are where the illustrations find their feet, fleshing out the world of this North Pole with plenty of amusing details.