When I first started this book, it struck me as a much-expanded picture book, as if it had started life with all the pictures and rhyming, but somewhere along the way someone, either an agent or a publisher, suggested connecting three or four of them into one volume under a single narrative thread.
It's a lower middle grade read, with lots of VERY LARGE text, rhyming couplets (and elves), and a super cute Christmasaurus, who hatches from a dino egg that survives the fall of dino-killing meteors by dropping into the ocean and later freezing in the North Pole.
It's found by elves, Santa sits on it and incubates it, and once it hatches, it longs to fly like Santa's reindeer.
Back in "the world," a little dino-obsessed boy, William, writes to Santa and asks for one thing: a real, live dinosaur. But they've been extinct for eons. Santa makes the boy a plushie replica of the Christmasaurus, which the little dino discovers and can't bear to part with.
Which is how it ends up in William's house on Christmas Eve, where there's a pure-evil man (who turns out to be his Uncle?) hunting flying reindeer. But one peek at the Christmasaurus and now the hunter's obsessed: he has to have its head on his wall. It's the ultimate trophy!
William, of course, is not-quite oblivious to the threat.
And that's when the story really picks up, so to speak.
It's a fun romp, that's for sure. Enjoy!
