Santa Finds Some Unexpected Helpers in Oh, What a Christmas!

In Jerry Pallotta’s Who Will Guide My Sleigh Tonight? Santa runs through all sorts of trials with different animals before settling on the perfect creatures to pull his sleigh. In the more recent picture book Oh, What a Christmas!, Michael Garland posits a scenario in which Santa already knows which animals work best but must resort to using different species due to an accident.

Garland is a longtime illustrator, and it is his lavish artwork that drives this silly but sweet tale. The story is told with simple narration in a couple of paragraphs per page. Particularly noteworthy phrases like “BIG, FAT, JOLLY RED SKYROCKET” and onomatopoeia like “THUD! STOMP! THWACK!” jump out at the reader in extra-large print and capital letters. Santa speaks from time to time, usually peppering his dialogue with “ho”s, but the reindeer are silent, as are the animals that come into the story soon afterward.

The book consists mostly of full-page illustrations and two-page spreads filled with vibrant colors and intricate shading. The tale begins with Santa and his reindeer embarking on their Christmas Eve ride, only to have a straightforward night thwarted when the harness breaks, causing the deer to be separated from Santa and the sleigh to crash. Santa lands near a barn, and it is there that he finds his replacements: two sheep, two cows, a horse, a pig, a goat and a hound dog. The main fun of the story is seeing these ordinary animals in the extraordinary situation of guiding Santa’s sleigh.

The animals have a fairly realistic look to them while still being slightly cartoonish, particularly in their eyes, which are large and white with small black pupils, each with a pinprick of light in it. Santa, too, has such eyes, along with rosy cheeks and a bulbous nose. His beard and mustache are silky white, and his suit looks quite cozy. Santa is very jolly-looking, while the animals spend much of their time looking gently confused. Some of the facial expressions are quite comical.

As stories go, this one isn’t too complicated, but it is sweet, since it allows a ragtag team of farm animals to do something amazing and to help Santa out of a jam. There’s a general sense of goodwill about the tale and a warm glow in several of the illustrations that would feel at home in a Thomas Kinkade painting. For young children who enjoy animals, this book offers a fun twist on a Christmas tradition.