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Reviewed by:
  • Santa Duck
  • Deborah Stevenson
Milgrim, David; Santa Duck; written and illus. by David Milgrim. Putnam, 2008; 32p ISBN 978-0-399-25018-7 $16.99 R 5–8 yrs

Clothes apparently make not only the man but the duck: when Nicholas Duck puts on the Santa suit and hat he found at his front door, he’s immediately assumed to be Santa by all he meets. After hearing the Christmas requests of a bevy of animals, he tries to get out of the Santa gig but can’t manage it; finally he runs into Santa himself and passes along the requests, deciding that being Santa’s helper is a pretty nifty Christmas gift in its own right. Though the end is a little murky, it’s the loopy details of this goofy comic story, such as the absurd rewrites of “Jingle Bells” (Nicholas sings “Jingle quack” while the cow sings “Jingle moo”) and the apropros yet entertaining gift requests (the turtle wants “a really, really fast race car that goes really, really fast,” while the squirrel wants several varieties of nuts and a shovel), that provide the Christmas kicks. Author-illustrator Milgrim puts much of the narrative in speech balloons, and the entertaining, sometimes pell-mell dialogue will delight enterprising readers even as it anchors the visual layouts. The figures are Milgrim-familiar, made of wavery but determined line notable for sudden shifts between bulbousness and threadlike slenderness (big heads, teensy necks, pipe-cleaner arms), anchored by calm planes of digital color with tidy shadows and highlights. Between this and Kelley’s The Dog Who Saved Santa, reviewed above, it’s a good Christmas year for animal helpers, and kids looking to ring the changes on the Yuletide bells will find this makes them merry indeed.

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