Seasonal - Feathered Quill

Santa's Lost Elves: A Funny Christmas Holiday Storybook Adventure for Kids

By: Rachel Hilz
Illustrated by: Remesh Ram
Publisher: Spirit Frog Press
Publication Date: October 2023
ISBN: 978-1990531378
Reviewed by: Diana Coyle

What does Santa do when he calls upon his elves and they aren’t anywhere to be found? It’s Christmas Eve and Santa needs to get ready to do his overnight job of delivering toys around the world to the good boys and girls, but when he calls his elves, no one answers in Santa’s Lost Elves by Rachel Hilz. Santa is in a panic because time is running out before he needs to leave to deliver all the toys. What is Santa to do?
Santa looks high and low in every possible place where the elves normally hang out with each other, but to no avail, no elves are found anywhere. He calls them on his cell phone, but still no one answers. All he knows is they left in the morning and promised to return for their planned Christmas flight. But without the elves, Christmas Eve will turn out to be a disaster this year if Santa doesn’t start finding what happened to all of them. He soon finds out that they decided to go to the mountain to have some fun and blow off some steam before their big night ahead. Since they still had a little time left before heading home, they decided to do one more ski run down the mountain. But little do they know, the ski lift is going to break and they are all going to be stuck for quite a while.
The facial expressions of Santa throughout this children’s picture book were priceless. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud at how expressive he was and just how panicked he was becoming as time ticked on and he couldn’t find his elves. When he finally found them all stuck in the ski lift, he came up with a creative idea in rounding up his reindeer to go pick up all the elves and the children who were stuck on the lift with the elves. It was time to bring the elves and children home to safety and who else to do such a great deed than Santa himself?
Another enjoyable thing about this book was that the author wrote in rhyme to the classic story, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. As soon as you start reading, you will immediately go into the cadence of how the original Christmas story is read and you will effortlessly read Santa’s Lost Elves in that same cadence. This will add to the reader’s pleasure while turning the pages of Hilz’s book.
The illustrations done by Remash Ram can be enjoyed by the reader, just as much as reading the book itself. They were comical and whimsical at the same time. Children will love looking at the funny pictures as they are having the book read to them, or they are independently reading to themselves.
Additional information to note is that this book is the third of 3 in the Santa’s Lost series and is written for the 4-8 year-old range. This book can definitely be read without reading the others, but what child wouldn’t love reading all three books in this series to fully enjoy what Santa, his elves, and reindeer are up to?
Quill says: Santa’s Lost Elves is a story that children, along with adults, will love reading. It teaches children that although things don’t always go as planned, if you think it through, you can come up with a solution that will work for everyone. Plus, it stresses that teamwork is very important when needing to get things done in a timely fashion.

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