About the Book and Author
This fun picture book about Santa’s broken-down sleigh is perfect for story-time on Christmas Eve. The rhyming narrative has been written by Caroline Crowe and it is accompanied by bright detailed cartoon-style illustrations from Jess Pauwels.
When Santa’s sleigh stops working on Christmas Eve the elves all rally round to help.
Will they be able to sort the sleigh out before it is too late? Things are not looking good until one small elf has a bright idea!
Caroline Crowe worked as a journalist for many years, before switching to writing books for children full-time. Her first book, Pirates in Pyjamas, won the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award and her second, Is that an Elephant in my Fridge was chosen by the Scottish Booktrust as one of their Bookbug books for 2018
Jess Pauwels lives in Brussels Belgium. She grew up in a professional dancers family, but pencils where more appealing to her.(and less exhausting !) She studied arts and i graduated in illustration at St Luc-Brussels and worked as an illustrator and a bookseller for a few years before concentrating on graphic design.
Book Review
Felix liked the rhyming text and the second time though we picked out all the rhyming pairs
Santa’s New Sleigh is all about what happens when Santa’s sleigh breaks down. When the sleigh can’t be fixed, the elves come up with lots of alternate (and hilarious) ideas on how the presents could be delivered, such as by owl post or balloons. Felix’s favourite idea was the catapult. He laughed a lot when one of the elves forgot to let go of the present. He laughed even more when we got to the endpapers and found the elf flying through the clouds still clutching the present!!
Felix also liked the page with the polar bears because we spent time guessing who the eyes peeping out of the sea belonged to.
We laughed at the page where Mrs Claus was training the elves to ride bikes. Now we know what elves do in the summer! It was fun to look at all the different expressions on the faces of the elves.
Felix liked the rhyming text and the second time though we picked out all the rhyming pairs.
The story features an elf who is Santa’s ‘Head Inventor’. After the story, Felix announced he wants to be an inventor and asked for a notebook he could use as an ‘Inventions Book’.
The book has an environmental message, and the word ‘pollution’ in the text led us to a discussion about what this means.
If you read this book, you will discover the secret of how Santa is able to deliver presents in the middle of the night without waking you up!
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If you would would like to buy a copy of the book we invite you to order it from your local independent book shop.
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Alternatively, we suggest that you visit your local library and request to borrow a copy from a friendly librarian.
Whichever you choose, we hope you enjoy being part of your unique reading community – happy reading everyone!
Reviewer Profile
- Name: Felix
- Age: 5 years
- Likes: Lego, stories and school
- Dislikes: Brussel sprouts
- Favourite Book: The Storm Whale by Benji Davies
- Favourite Film: Dora and the Lost City of Gold
- Favourite Song: Baby Shark
