Christmas Wombat (review)

In this humorous holiday tale, French’s droll and perpetually ravenous wombat discovers Santa’s reindeer eating a plateful of carrots left out for them. Carrots being the wombat’s vegetable of choice, the wombat proceeds to go head to head with the reindeer in a staring contest of wills (“Fought major battle with strange creatures”); after winning the coveted carrots, he promptly snuggles up on the runners of Santa’s sleigh to sleep, only to have the sleigh take off. Fortunately, each of Santa’s stops offers a bounty of more orange veggies (“Never knew there were so many carrots in the world!”), and the wombat thoroughly enjoys his journey despite a few mishaps (after mistaking a chimney for a wombat hole, he needs a leg up from Santa to get back out). Upon finally returning home, the wombat falls asleep against a carrot-filled stocking. Although this is basically a one-joke story, the combination of French’s dryly comic narration and Whatley’s waggish illustrations (rendered in acrylic paint on watercolor paper) make it a highly enjoyable one. The wombat is adorable in its chocolate-brown rotundity, and Whatley manages to convey a surprising amount of hilarity through the wombat’s eyes (heavy lids indicate disapproval while wide eyes convey the wombat’s surprise or joy) and through the positioning of its pudgy body (it is frequently and amusingly prone to lying with all four legs sticking straight up). This could make a diverting Christmas Eve readaloud, along with a plate of carrots for the reindeer . . . and whoever else Santa brings along.