by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 10, 2010

Santa's reindeer make trouble for a little blonde girl who lives "up in the Arctic in the shadow of Santa's Winterfarm." But if you're fan of Jan Brett, you may recognize the girl. She's the same girl who had "Trouble With Trolls," and in another book taught those same trolls he meaning of Christmas. In those books her name is Teeva, but here's she's secret. Maybe this book is about her cousin who lives at the north pole…

Santa asks Teeka to prepare his flying reindeer for delivering toys on Christmas Eve. She's excited - it's the first time Santa's asked her - but the reindeer have been running wild on the tundra since the previous year. "The reindeer were bewildered by Teeka's voice," Brett writes, adding that the reindeer turned their heads - "to see who this loud creature was."

Brett does a good job of giving the reindeer believable animal personalities. One snorts, and one nips, while another angrily stomps its hooves. And the reindeer seem even more ornery because they don't have their usual reindeer names. In this book, there's just five flying reindeer - named Lichen, Crag, Tundra, Heather, Snowball, and Twilight.

Teeka grooms the reindeer, brushing and combing their coats, "so long and hard that their ears started turning pink." Snowflakes dance in the air as she tries to attach their harnesses, but they resist the arrangement and soon start to kick and bolt. Soon the reindeer have fallen over each other in the snow - and locked their antlers in a complicated tangle. Teeka cries and apologizes for all the yelling, then hugs each reindeer and promises to try to untangle them.

And there's a beautiful paragraph describing the way Teeka's new voice inspired the reindeer. "Heather's eyes sparkled. Crag cracked a reindeer grin. Bramble giggled and Snowball sighed. Tundra laughed and Twilight smiled." The reindeer's gentle laughing shakes their antlers apart. And by the next day, they're all cooperating.

But it's the perfect Christmas book because of the illustrations by Jan Brett - which always include magical "bonus" illustrations in the margins of each page. During this story about he reindeer, Brett also offers glimpses of the toy-making elves scattered throughout Santa workshop. Each page features two wonderful peeks of the elves, as they're knitting ski caps, painting hobby horses, stuffing animals and baking candy canes.

And as the book ends, the elves are seen in silhouette, peering out through the orange glow of a window to watch Santa's sleigh flying by.

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