Santa Baby 
by Smriti Prasadam-Halls
Illustrated by Ada Grey
Bloomsbury Childrens Books, United Kingdom, 2015
Age group: 2 to 5 year olds
Format: 32 page hardcover picture book
This book combines my love of books and my daughter’s obsessions with babies, so it was bound to be a favourite in our house!
The story
Santa’s young son and his young reindeer friend, Roo, are disappointed at not joining Santa on his big Christmas Eve trip.
My review
I fond the premise of this book cute – namely that Santa has a baby and Roo is a baby reindeer – presumably Rudolph‘s baby although this is not said or hinted at.
So Baby Santa is disappointed at not being old enough to go out in Santa’s sleigh and has to wave goodbye as Santa takes off with a sleigh full of gifts. It amused me that Santa sent the baby (really a young child!) to bed as you can’t get any gifts unless you get to sleep!
They find some gifts, think Santa left them behind, so take off in their mini sleigh. After a couple of distractions (typical of a toddler or young child!), they get into trouble and {spoiler alert!} are rescued by Santa. As an adult I predicted who the left behind presents would belong to, but young readers will be surprised and amazed at the twist it gives to the story!
The illustrations are clear and cute, the story is nicely paced and easily understood by young readers. My nine year old enjoyed reading it out loud – the only word she stumbled over was ’twas 🙂 – and loved the story itself.
Would I recommend it? Yes I do recommend it! Santa Baby is a lovely little story and young children will find lots they can relate to, with a bit of dreamed off excitement thrown in!
