Maggie Goes Looking for Santa Claus on a Flying Cow

There are plenty of stories about flying reindeer, but in Looking for Santa Claus, a quaint picture book by Henrik Drescher, we spend most of a book with a flying cow. Blossom lives with a little family that consists of a girl named Maggie and her ornery aunts, who treat their niece much like Cinderella. It’s a dreary life, so when Blossom offers an escape via a trip to find Santa Claus, Maggie readily agrees, and an adventure begins.

Looking for Santa Claus is a curious book that calls to mind the old nursery rhyme about the cow jumping over the moon. Blossom, with Maggie on her back, traverses the globe, flying overhead and occasionally pulling off daring rescues. They meet three different men who look like Santa, but they all have different names, hinting at the fact that Santa is known throughout the world, but he sometimes has different characteristics.

One of the most interesting pictures in the book depicts the world at a glance, with different people, animals and landmarks scattered throughout the continents. There are quite a few different pictures, and it’s fun to try to match up each drawing with the country it is supposed to represent. In terms of pure geography, it’s not particularly accurate, but it’s a very engaging illustration that captures the diversity of the world. Generally speaking, I find Drescher’s illustration style to be surrealistic, and while they don’t entirely capture my imagination, the pictures do seem suited to the mysterious nature of the journey.

The book is written in a simple manner, with usually just one sentence per page. The pictures tell most of the story, giving us the personalities of the Russian, Swiss and Egyptian Santas, along with Maggie’s aunts, who undergo an intriguing transition between the beginning and end of the story.

One odd illustration show gifts being tossed down the chimney to land in the fireplace around which several characters are gathered. The fire is lit, so you would think that the presents would be singed at best, and a house fire wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility. Additionally, while the implication is that all the men who Maggie meets on her journey serve a Santa role, all three are present when Santa Claus soars across the sky with his reindeer, which makes it a bit unclear just what role they play. Perhaps the idea is just that they are kind men who are ideally suited to interact with Maggie’s aunts.

Looking for Santa Claus is a strange but rather soothing book that invites readers to imagine what they might find if they went for a ride around the world. While I find most of the story a little less engaging than I would hope, I like the multi-cultural overtones and the emphasis on forgiveness, and I wouldn’t mind taking a ride on a flying cow myself.