Santa on the Loose!: A Seek and Solve Mystery! A Christmas Holiday Book for Kids

by Bruce Hale, Dave Garbot (Illustrator)

Santa's sleigh is ready to go—except for one The presents are nowhere to be found! Santa needs your help to find out who took the toys! Is the culprit an unhappy elf or a disgruntled reindeer or even—yikes!—a hungry polar bear? With so many possible suspects, Santa's going to have to do some serious detective work to crack this case before Christmas comes!

Genres: Picture Books, Christmas, Holiday

32 pages, Hardcover

First published September 25, 2012

About the author

A serious book addict, Bruce wanted to be a children's book author since he was in 4th grade (right after he got over wanting to be a pirate, Tarzan, and Daniel Boone). Today he's the author-illustrator of over 70 seriously funny books for kids, so some dreams do come true.

The Malted Falcon, one of his Chet Gecko Mysteries series, was an Edgar Award finalist, and Murder, My Tweet won a Little D Award for Juvenile Humor Writing. Bruce has written everything from picture books and easy readers, to graphic novels and novels.

Bruce's recent Monstertown Mysteries series blends horror and humor, based on his childhood love of monster movies. His other series include Class Pets, about the secret lives of classroom pets, and the forthcoming Outerspace Mystery Pizza Club books, due in 2024.

A Fulbright Scholar (in Storytelling), Bruce is also a popular speaker, both in the U.S. and internationally. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and knuckleheaded dog Riley. When he's not writing or reading, you may find him hiking, kickboxing, or singing with a latin-jazz band called Mezcal Martini.

Reviews

[Margaret Chind]

Christmas time reads with Santa are always fun. This is a Where's Waldo type book with a Finding Santa twist adding a mystery in through out as well as you find Santa and clues to discover who robbed them of toys. It's an interesting and unexpected but innocent ending and plenty of things to discover and find through out. The pictures are very brilliant and bright. A kiddo will stare at this and examine the pictures for a long while I'm sure!

*Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy for review.*

scheduled: http://creativemadnessmama.com/blog/2...

[Terry]

This was not what I expected. I thought this was more of an "I Spy" type book where you searched for multiple items on a page. Instead, you are tasked to find Santa and the clue he's discovered. The pages were so overwhelming visually that I wasn't interested in coming back to see what else was going on.

Pros: Lots of cute penguins, polar bears, and elves make it fun to solve the mystery.

To read our full review, go to the Reading Tub.

[Debra]

A very well done seek and solve Christmas book. Santa is hidden on each page and each item he is holding is a clue as to who is the thief. A cast of potential suspects is included and a reprise of the clues that Santa found. Good fun! The child must find the clues and then remember them in order to find the thief.

[Taryn]

I picked it out only because Juni loves hide and seek books these days and sure enough, she liked searching the pages, but the overarching find-the-thief theme was over her head. And there are SO MANY puzzle pages to search. Juni's rating: 4 stars. Mine: 2 stars (clever ending). Kurt's: 0 stars.

[Elaine]

This was a very good exploratory book to share for the winter holiday season. During storytime, we were enjoying the mystery challenge of trying to find Santa on each page. The illustrations are busy but it suited the story theme very well.

[Joella]

This is like an eye spy or Where's Waldo type of book...only for Christmas things.

[Marissa]

My kids loved it. Kept their interest the whole time, and they've gone back to it many times. Can't ask for much more!

[Karen]

We had lots of fun with this one!