Santa's Busy Night (level 1)

Word-by-Word First Reader

by Michael Rex (Illustrator)

A brand-new series for beginning readers--featuring one word per page!

It's Christmas Eve, and Santa needs to hurry up and deliver his toys! With the help of one of his elves, he quickly gets ready and makes it to a house. But Santa runs into many problems along the way (he gets stuck in the chimney, tracks dirt on the clean carpet, mixes up the toys, etc.), but thanks to the elf, all is eventually well.

Throughout this book, there's just one word per page. This unique format will allow kids to build a bridge to reading--word by word.

Genres: Christmas

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'd think it would be hard to tell a story in 29 one-word sentences, but the lively art deftly fill in the gaps during an elf's stressful night of keeping an absent-minded and easily distracted Santa on task while delivering toys.

My daughter enjoyed this at four and twenty-four.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw the cover of this book at our local library and I immediately recognized the illustrations by Michael Rex from his books like You Can Do Anything, Daddy and My Fire Engine. I was surprised at how overly simple the narrative is, and I would've expected to see more than one word per page, even for an early reader book.

Still, the book is entertaining, even if you just get the story from the pictures. I can't read books like this with our girls anymore, so I sneak to the library to get my fix. (Yes, I admit it, I'm a picture-book junkie!)