The 12 Sleighs of Christmas

It’s 12 days before Christmas and Santa’s elves have just discovered that Santa’s sleigh is “totaled, smashed, and battered!” So they decide to strip it bare and rebuild it new. But then, one by one each of Santa’s elves has an idea to improve Santa’s sleigh. “And so a dozen teams are set, they crowd around and make a bet; which team can build the coolest sleigh for Santa’s use that special day.”

For the most part the rhymes in The Twelves Sleighs of Christmas work well, like this one:

With Christmas Eve just days away,

work is quickly underway.

Behind closed doors, designs are sketched

and then supplies are quickly fetched—

all sorts of odd and wondrous things—

gizmos, motors, wings, and springs.
 

When the time comes for Santa to choose the winning sleigh, he’s dazzled by each and every cool design from a noisy dragster sleigh to a mountain sized big rig and a 50-sail floating ship to a motorcycle sleigh, flying saucers, and trucks with wings.

But nothing seems exactly right until the smallest member of Santa’s team presents plan B and yells, “Surprise!,” and “out comes Santa’s sleigh, restored, ready to go, with toys on board. Just like magic, out it glides . . .” along with nine of Santa’s loyal reindeer.

The real fun for kids comes on the second to last spread—spoiler alert!—just after Santa departs to deliver toys to children across the globe. With all of the funky new sleighs each of the teams has built what else would a bunch of elves decide to do? They wouldn’t sit still, would they? Nope. They would shout, “LET’S RACE!

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a perfect gift for kids and adults that marvel at trucks and ships and flying saucers, as well as delight in action-packed, colorful illustrations. If you enjoyed reading Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site or Steam Train, Dream Train, also by the same author, Sherri Duskey Rinker, then The Twelve Days of Christmas would make a good companion book and add nicely to your budding reader’s library.