Auntie Claus, Home for the Holidays [Hardcover]

Elise Primavera (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2009 | Age Level: 4 and up

Have you heard? New York is the new North Pole!

Just ask Auntie Claus!

Sophie Kringle had always dreamed of being the Sugar Plum Fairy in the school play. After all, Sophie is a Kringle. Her family lives at the Bing Cherry Hotel, and her favorite aunt, Auntie Claus, serves Christmas cookies at teatime -- even in July. When Auntie Claus hears that Sophie will make her debut in the school play, she decides to have her cake and eat it too -- this year Auntie Claus will be home for the holidays and the North Pole will move south to New York! Finally getting to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, the department store windows, and the 57th Street Snowflake with Auntie Claus -- Sophie will have a Christmas that she never could have imagined!

Join Sophie on an adventure that goes straight to the heart of Christmas! Bring along your favorite Christmas cookie recipe, your warmest coat, and your tutu!

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 4–Can you really have your cake and eat it, too? Sophie Kringle's Auntie Claus (Santa's sister) certainly thinks so. When Sophie has the opportunity to play the Sugar Plum Fairy in her school's presentation of The Nutcracker, she is thrilled, but also sad, because her favorite aunt will be away on her annual &business trip. Not true, insists Auntie Claus. They'll just move the North Pole to New York City. It sounds like a good idea, but of course chaos ensues. Ghosts (Christmas Past, Present, and Future), elves, reindeer, and the real Sugar Plum Fairy descend upon the Bing Cherry Hotel, and the city is covered with snow and ice. As always, Primavera's exuberant and stylized acrylic paintings fill each page with color and excitement, and interesting details reward careful viewers. Fans of the first two Auntie Claus stories will not be disappointed.–Mara Alpert, Los Angeles Public Library END

About the Author

Elise Primavera has illustrated more than twenty books for children, several of which she also wrote, including the New York Times bestselling Auntie Claus as well as Auntie Claus and the Key to Christmas and Auntie Claus Home for the Holidays. Other titles include Plantpet, a Parents Magazine Best Book and she illustrated Raising Dragons by Jerdine Nolen which received a 1999 Christopher Award, the 1999 Irma S. and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature from the Bank Street College of Education, and an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award. Newsweek, Sesame Street Parent's magazine, and Smithsonian Magazine selected the book as one of the best of 1998.  Most recently Ms. Primavera has authored Louise the Big Cheese: Divine Diva and Louise the Big Cheese and the La Di Da Shoes both illustrated by Diane Goode.  Elise Primavera lives in New Jersey.  Visit her at eliseprimavera.com.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books (October 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416954856
• ISBN-13: 978-1416954859
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #594,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elise Primavera has been writing and illustrating children's books for more than twenty-five years. She has received numerous awards for her work and in 2004 she was asked to illustrate the Christmas Brochure for the White House. Her bestselling book AUNTIE CLAUS has sold over half a million copies. Elise wrote her first novel the popular SECRET ORDER OF THE GUMM STREET GIRLS in 2006. Her latest book LIBBY OF HI HOPES is an illustrated novel due to arrive 2012. For more information visit www.eliseprimavera.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ms. Primavera has lost her way., December 8, 2009

By 

Jeremy Woodward (Riverside, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Auntie Claus, Home for the Holidays (Hardcover)

This book is a trainwreck. I love the first book, Auntie Claus, I haven't read the second. This book fails in the following ways: the illustrations lack much of the care and, frankly, the spatial and pictorial clarity of the first book. In several pages the background is such a swimmy blue and purple mess it's genuinely hard to tell what we're supposed to be seeing. The renderings of the characters has become distressingly cutesified - Auntie Claus looks so marvelously thin and astringent in the original, and she seems to be recently flown in from planet Barbie in this book.

Auntie Claus's central theme in the first book was lovely - It is far better to give than receive. The plot was well-constructed around Sophie's development and sudden understanding of this truth. In this book Auntie Claus's wisdom goes like this: You can have your cake and eat it too. The moral of this latest book comes across as perhaps the opposite of the first. I was amazed at the indignation this stirred up in me. A driving crisis in the plot of this book? The Sugar Plum ballerina gets too fat for her pink tutu. Not too fat to dance, mind you, just too fat for the tutu. I'm not a ninny, or a moralist, or some sort of P.C. learning-and-hugs scold, but I honestly cannot imagine continuing to read to my 5-year-old daughter a story where the horrible thing that happens that makes Sophie wonder if she can really have her cake and eat it too, is that the Sugar Plum Fairy got too fat for her tutu.

I could go on. I'll stop.

I really love the first book, and am truly sorry to say that in its illustration and plot and character development, this book seems to me badly conceived and poorly executed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, October 19, 2011

By 

White Fang (York, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Auntie Claus, Home for the Holidays (Hardcover)

"Auntie Claus Home for the Hoildays" is a light and delightful secular Christmas book. It is a rather large picture book - 10 inches by 11 3/8 inches and has 40 pages. The book has a beautiful full color dust jacket with "Auntie Claus" in the title, embossed and done in shiny red metallic lettering. The dust jacket, itself, will captivate the interest of most children. Almost every page has a very colorful drawing done in a cartoon style similar to Walt Disney. The drawings are not my favorite style but most kids will really enjoy them.

This is an original Christmas tale. I especially love the author's originality in bringing the North Pole to New York City. It is quite enjoyable to experience the Bing Cherry Hotel and all of New York City transformed into the North Pole. That is the kind of thing that creates wonderful, unique and original stories that captivate the readers' attentions.

One of the favorite expressions of Auntie Claus in this book is "You can have your cake and eat it too." This very expression seems to invoke a materialistic and sometimes a "me" and self satisfaction attitude which does not fit into the Christmas spirit. However, the author does turn the whole thing around by showing that unselfish acts often pay off by giving the unselfish person a greater blessing.

The reasons I gave a three star rating is because when I read a child's Christmas book I like to see more of the true meaning of Christmas somewhere in the text. This book did have a tender, more in depth message when Sophie, who so looked forward to being the Sugar Plum Fairy in her school's Christmas play, gave her pink tutu to the real Sugar Plum Fairy because hers didn't fit any longer. I also felt the ending of this story was rather abrupt. As a reader I was looking for something else.

The book is a delightful Children's Christmas book, but a little short on the Christmas message.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Run for Home for the Holidays!, December 12, 2009

By 

kimberly linsley (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Auntie Claus, Home for the Holidays (Hardcover)

Mrs. Primavera delivers again! This is the second book I have gifted to my niece and she adores the storyline provided yet again.... the illustrations are beautifully done. It is the perfect book to gift at the holidays.

I noticed one other review when I happened upon this link to purchase this as another gift for a good friends daughter ... the remarks of a train wreck are not only unfounded and seem a bit contrived, they also seem a tad overboard for any review of any children's book. I am certain Mrs. Primavera will overlook this ungracious review, yet I cannot. I give her much kudos and I look forward for more to come.