by Moe Zilla

Created on: June 14, 2010

It turns out Santa Claus has a son named Peter, and he feels sorry for the people on Santa's "Naughty" list. "Does it have to be that way?" he asks - and it turns out he's got a vested interest. Amazingly, even Santa's own son had made the naughty list one year. (He'd forgot to feed the reindeer one night...and he'd also used Christmas tree ornaments as bowling balls!)

So the rebellious Peter Claus steals Santa's sleigh for "a midnight mission" to help all the naughty children of the world. "No one looked naughty from way up high," writes author Lawrence David, and soon Peter has arrived at the house of the first naughty child. "I don't remember being bad this year," says the little boy, though Peter explains that no one ever does. Soon he's collected a whole sleigh-ful of naughty children from around the world, and he's whisked them back to the North Pole to make their case to Santa.

I think Peter Claus makes a very good point to his father. "Don't you think you should find out why they did naughty things before you decide they belong on the naughty list?" For example, little Toby Malloy had called his sister "Monkey Face," which seems like a pretty clear infraction. But Toby argues to Santa that his sister "does have a monkey face." And when Santa flies him home, Toby performs another exonerating good deed - helping his sister build a snowman.

It's kind of a downer to see one naughty child after another - and there's also a weird feeling in the book's illustrations. Delphine Durand uses flat "cut-out" style of drawing, and her stylized representations of the characters make them all seem like they're something other than human. The weirdness sometimes feels oddly appropriate, like the book's montage of the 74 "naughties" committed by Peter throughout the year. But even the colors are pale and odd, so the book never develops a sunny holiday feel.

There's an even stranger addition to the Santa Claus legend in this book, since apparently the title of "Santa" is hereditary. ("'That's the way my father taught me to do it when he was Santa, and the way his dad taught him,' Santa said.") But I was glad that by the end of the book, Santa had learned some flexibility from the experience with his son. "You're always a nice boy," he decides, "even when you do naughty things."

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