SantaKid  
By James Patterson with
Illustrated by Michael Garland

     SantaKid is an extremely pretty book. The foil cover and gorgeous digital illustrations by Michael Garland make it a visual delight. It also has a clever premise: what would it be like to be Santa's little girl? My five-year-old daughter loved the idea of living at the North Pole and visiting Santa's workshop every day. However, despite such wonderful potential, it ends up being a rather disappointing book. Having your narrator speak directly to the listener is a tricky bit of authorial magic. Sometimes it works and delights the reader or listener--as in The Series of Unfortunate Events or The Tale of Desperaux, and sometimes it leaves the listener puzzled and annoyed--as in The English Roses. Unfortunately, this time the result is a bit more Madonna than Lemony Snicket. My daughter was totally bewildered when the book commanded her not to shake her head and not to giggle when she didn't feel the slightest urge to do either. And after the narrator informed her that the book was going to be funny, she kept waiting for that to happen; it didn't. The story's logic also puzzles her. The dreadfully commercial Warrie Ransom barges into Santa's office to buy Christmas. Santa, of course, refuses. On the next page, Christmas is sold. Who sold it? We don't know, and Patterson isn't telling. I guess he didn't think kids would notice. Somehow I doubt mine will be the only one who does. The book represents a nice try by an author whose talents really lie in writing for adults, and it certainly packages a tidy lesson, but after you get done looking at the pretty pictures, it gets a little thin.