The 12 Sleighs of Christmas

The elves are getting ready for Christmas day, but there’s one hitch in their plans: the sleigh is destroyed. Desperate to have it fixed in time, the elves break up into teams and create twelve sleighs for Santa to choose from, which range from trains to trucks to helicopters. The story centers on the elves as they let their imaginations run wild with sleigh ideas and playfully compete against each other. The illustrations by Jake Parker are bright and colorful, with vivid details that are perfectly paired with the lyrical quality of the writing. The story is a play off of the twelve days of Christmas but with a fun twist featuring a wide variety of sleighs, which adds to the humor and the fun. Sherri Duskey Rinker gets into the holiday spirit with a story that brings out the magic and jolliness of Christmas with these creative and slightly absurd sleighs that resemble things from blimps to boats. The end has a wonderful classic Christmas feel to it as the littlest elf fixes Santa’s original sleigh that everyone is familiar with, right before Santa is seen crashed into a tree. The 12 Sleighs of Christmas is the perfect holiday read and is a lot of fun with writing that is poetic and lyrical, adding to the magic of the story and loveliness of the illustrations.