Secret Life of Santa Clause

This is a great book to leave on your coffee table during the Christmas season. It gives definitions of words as they would pertain to Santa Claus' life along with a painting for each. I put it out every Christmas and find myself leafing through it and smiling.

This book offers a wonderfully warped walk through the alphabet, exposing more of Santa's odd predilections with each letter. The drawings are delightful and the text is, well, odd. (Example for the letter B, accompanied by a cute illustration of a baboon - "BOTTOM: in Africa there are nasty monkeys who display their bottoms to Santa. This is neither very nice nor very polite. That's why they never get presents.") This combines for a joyfully quirky look at Santa in contrast to the normally maudlin treacle written about Nick.

I flipped through a friend's copy of this book and immediately had to search for more copies. One for myself, and one for those within my circle of friends that I feel can fully appreciate its humor. (I know what they're getting for Christmas!)This book was written by G. Solotareff and was translated from French. It could be said that it has lost something in translation, or like me, you can say that it's funny because it's strange...a strangeness that comes directly from a language barrier that was broken.This book takes children from A-Z through Santa's life (personal and otherwise) with little quips of information and brilliantly illustrated pictures that sometimes leaves you baffled and befuddled, but always smiling!Check it out!