Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Santa Meets Space Dudes


I love the idea of combining Santa with aliens and did a chapter doing that very thing in my first book. Gregory Maguire did an entire novel on the subject.

In Five Alien Elves, a group of space travelers crash land in Hamlet, Vermont on Christmas Eve. After picking up a bit of a Christmas movie on their spaceship's monitor, they decide that the evil Santa Claws must be enslaving elves who turn out evil soldiers and dolls that the old man in red plants in homes after he breaks in and steals family members' milk and cookies. Since the head alien is out to earn herself some kind of merit badge for liberating a planet, she decides to save humanity by capturing Santa and freeing his workers.

I was looking for an alien book for younger kids, and this one definitely does the trick. The aliens capture the local mayor, who's sweet on a teacher in town, while he's done up as Santa. The teacher's students step up to the plate, hunt for the guy, and take on the aliens. The aliens are misguided and funny, and the kids are a bit over the top in a humorous way.

The only drawback to this book is that the characters make it pretty clear that Santa isn't real. That's the kind of mature content that some parents find disturbing. So you've been warned.

Five Alien Elves is part of seven-book series called The Hamlet Chronicles.

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