Young Santa, by Dan Greenburg

Specifics
Young Santa, by Dan Greenburg, Illustrated by Warren Miller
Published by Viking, 1991

Target Audience
Lexile level not shown
This book is for students that can read harder books, because it is a longer chapter book. Grades three to six.

Summary
This book is a version of how Santa Claus became the man we think of today. It goes through how his parents chose his name, how they ended up living in the North Pole, how Santa got his sleigh, and how he started delivering presents. It is a version of a Santa story that has nothing to do with religion, but simply about all of the details that make Santa, Santa. Throughout the book, the character is always referred to as "young" Santa, to remind us that this was before he became the Santa we think of today,

Evaluation
This story is not the most realistic, just because nobody lives at the North Pole, there aren't, of course, both penguins and polar bears at the North Pole, like this books claim, and no one would buy an icebox if they lived in the North Pole. But this story is a fun way of explaining Santa. The main character overcomes his problems, maybe not in the most logical of ways, but in the ways that are necessary for telling a story about Santa and Christmas Eve. The language used for the dialogue in this book did sound natural. The illustrations were perfect for a Santa story, especially in that they were black and white, with the only color included being red. The people depicted, however, were not very diverse... besides the fact that there were elves.

Lesson
This book would go perfectly with a lesson about Christmas and Santa Claus. There would be a lot of things within the book to talk about, such as the allusions to all of the well-known Christmas stories, the hyperboles that the author includes, and the puns and sayings included that even Santa's character doesn't always understand.