Pookie Believes in Santa Claus [Hardcover]

Ivy Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up | Series: Pookie

Pookie, the little white rabbit with wings, first published in 1945, is a classic, endearing character and HarperCollins is delighted to be bringing him to their list. Christmas is coming but Pookie is worried about whether there is a real Santa Claus or not. Always eager to find out the truth, Pookie stays up all night on Christmas Eve and is rewarded when he hears the faint tinkle of sledge bells. Pookie is so excited about seeing Santa Claus that he wakes up all the woodland folk to tell them, but nobody believes him. The only way they will believe him is to meet him themselves...This is sure to be the most magical Christmas ever. AGE 4-7 as well as adults who remember Pookie from their own childhoods.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Another popular character makes an appearance in Pookie Believes in Santa Claus by Ivy Wallace. Young and old alike will delight in the nostalgic illustrations, first published in the U.K. in 1953 and newly available in the U.S.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-Originally published in Great Britain in 1953, this illustrated storybook provides a solution to the gnawing questions: How can Santa possibly go to everyone's home in one evening? Why do people give one another presents and pretend they're from Santa? Why are there fake Santas everywhere-people wearing Santa costumes? These issues have brought on a crisis of faith for Pookie, a rabbit with wings (there's no explanation for the wings), who fears "It's all just pretend." When he meets Santa, the little guy gets answers to these and a variety of other questions (such as why people hang up stockings). Santa explains that he doesn't give presents to everyone: "Children who have kind families and plenty of friends don't need me-. [but] If someone has done something special, I like to take them [sic] a present too." Enthusiastically punctuated with multiple exclamation points, populated by creatures with names like Wigglenose Rabbit and Squiffytail Squirrel, and illustrated to emphasize the cuteness inherent in small creatures and elves, this period piece holds more nostalgia value than contemporary appeal.-S. P.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0001983806
• ISBN-13: 978-0001983809
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,733,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Pookie's Crisis of Christmas Belief, November 2, 2011

By 

John Gough "John Gough - Deakin University" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pookie Believes in Santa Claus (Hardcover)

Pookie's Crisis of Christmas Belief
Ivy L. Wallace is a marvellous author-illustrator, leaving aside her other, now neglected, work as an author of full-length children's novels.
Her "Pookie", and "Pookie Puts the World Right" are amongst the best picture-story books ever written.
By comparison, "Pookie Believes in Santa Claus" is almost as good, but arguably not in the same top quality.

What is it about?
"Pookie Believes in Santa Claus" tells another story of Pookie, the little rabbit who has been born, through some happy accident of magic, with wings, even though no other rabbits, in his own family, or elsewhere, can fly.
Having been forced to leave his own home (in "Pookie"), to seek his fortune, Pookie now lives with Belinda, the kind daughter of a wood-cutter.
Pookie's woodland world is a gentle fantasy blend of Arthur Rackham-like elves and goblins in an almost idyllic forest world, among wood-folk such as rabbits, mice, squirrels, moles and owls -- think of Beatrix Potter's animals or Allison Uttley's wonderful "Little Grey Rabbit" picture-story books -- as well as elves, goblins, pixies and similar creatures of fairytale.

In "Pookie Believes in Santa Claus", the story opens a few days before Christmas.
Pookie is puzzled. He HEARS everyone talking about Santa Claus, and the wonderful presents Santa Claus brought in earlier years. But he SAW Belinda's father secretly putting Belinda's sturdy new shoes beside her bed on the previous Christmas Eve, and he KNOWS Belinda secretly made his own Christmas present of red trousers: and so on.
When Pookie discusses this with his woodland friends, naturally no one has SEEN Santa Claus, and the best any of them can say is that they HOPE there is a real Santa Claus. But they all have DOUBTS.
Then, on Christmas Eve, the woodland folk gather in the wood for the "Great Thank You". This involves an outdoor sharing and feasting of homemade Christmas-tide goodies, and then, at one minute to midnight, a collective lifting of happy faces to the star-filled sky, and a quietly smiled "Thank you", for the joy of living.
(Clearly this is a variant of the legend retold in Thomas Hardy's Christmas poem, where at midnight on Christmas Eve all the animals kneel in adoration and memory of the birth of the Christ Child. Published in 1953, "Pookie Believes in Santa Claus" is about FOUR YEARS earlier than Dr Seuss's classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Uttley's "Little Grey Rabbit's Christmas" dates back to 1939! But, as I recall, Little Grey Rabbit and her companions have none of the mystical ceremony of Seuss or Wallace, only a rich version of country traditions and gift-giving.)
When the other woodland folk go back to their homes, Pookie stays outside, determined to meet Santa Claus.
And (PLOT SPOILER!) he does.

But this is a disillusioned Santa Claus. He feels that no one believes in him. The good deeds of secret Christmas-time gift-giving, that his great-great-great-...-grandfather had started for poor people, are, this current Santa Claus feels, no longer needed. And NO ONE BELIEVES!
Happily, Pookie certainly believes in what he has actually seen.

In fact Santa Claus takes Pookie back to his own secret wood, where Pookie sees the goblins who make the secret Christmas presents and cook the Christmas toffee
Just as happily, Santa offers to take Pookie and twenty-six (why that number?) of his best friends back to his secret wood for a Christmas Night banquet.
Happily, heartened by Pookie's faithfulness, Santa Claus resolves to continue.
Just as happily, Santa Claus also has a young son who will keep the tradition.

Early in the wee hours of Boxing Day, Pookie falls asleep, saying, "There'll always be a Santa Claus!"
That IS the right ending to this kind of what's-it-all-about book.

For young children who are on the verge of starting to disbelieve in Santa Claus this is, indeed, ALMOST the perfect book.
Why "almost"?
Unfortunately, Ivy Wallace has given a portrait of Santa Claus who does not quite fit the standard Santa Claus tradition that most children are raised to believe.
Her Santa does not live at the North Pole, and does not have elves.
Wallace's Santa Claus lives in a wood, or deep forest, and his helpers are goblins.
He does, fortunately, wear the traditional (the tradition, apparently, established by Coca Cola advertising posters from the 1930s?) red suit with white fur trim.
He does have a sleigh of reindeer that flies (or perhaps it only glides over the snow).

But, CONTRARY to modern tradition, Wallace's Santa Claus gives presents, secretly, ONLY to children and others (adults, animals, fairy-folk) who were too poor, or too alone, to give to other people, or to receive presents themselves from other people.
This helps Pookie realise WHY so few people now believe in Santa Claus: most people have enough money or other means, and enough social contacts to do all the Christmas giving and receiving without any need for a separate real secret Santa Claus. In fact, many dress up to pretend to be the "real" Santa Claus.
Obviously, as Pookie now understands, this means that the remaining role for the real Santa Claus is to continue to fill the gaps of the poor and lonely.
(But this is NOT what most very young children are told about Santa Claus, is it?)

Santa explains:
-- "And when people and children open their presents on Christmas morning they KNOW who all their presents are from and thank each other, and then say, "Look what Santa Claus brought me!' And the joke is I've never taken them anything yet, Pookie, because they all have plenty of friends and relations to give them presents!"
(If only we could be confident that the poor and lonely DO get secret presents from the REAL Santa!)

Happily, the TRUE meaning of Christmas is at least hinted at in this story.
(Seuss's story of the Grinch offers no account at all of the birth of Jesus. For Seuss, probably understandably, as a liberal Jew writing for a mainstream Christian-minded audience, Christmas IS special, but it amounts to not much more than the specialness of a traditional family-and-community get-together like Thanksgiving.)
While Wallace's Santa Claus describes his "very kind" ancestor, the original Saint Nicholas (with no mention of the religious meaning of the titular word "saint"), this current Santa Claus says, mysteriously:
-- "... my [ancestor] ...when Christmas-time came around ... liked to see every one happy. It is too big a thing to explain to a small Rabbit, but Humans have the most wonderful reason in the world for remembering Christmas Day".
Pookie says that Belinda has told him about this, and mentions the woodland folk's "Great Thank You", and adds, "It is almost too big and wonderful for small Animal's brains to understand, but we know we're alive in a beautiful World, and we feel we MUST say 'Thank You!'".

In short, "Pookie Believes in Santa Claus" comes close to providing a happy, plausible story that reinforces the might-be-doubting child's innocent belief in Santa Claus, or Father Christmas ("Same person!", says this Santa Claus -- of course!), while nudging the child to remember the real story of the Nativity.
(However what THAT itself -- the Nativity -- REALLY means is, indeed, almost "too big a thing to explain". Any explanation would need to resort to recounting the story of Adam and Eve's temptation and Fall, and the redemption of Christ's sacrifice at Calgary on Good Friday. And then we need to add in something about "the Son of God". Maybe Seuss is right to emphasise the mere sociable celebrating, and leave theology for older children and adult study. Maybe Raymond Brigg's grumpy old "Father Christmas" is at least as convincing an account of the "REAL" Santa Claus, with NO Christian trappings whatsoever, just a home at the North Pole, flying reindeer, and secret presents.)

Not so happily, Wallace gives poorly chosen names to some of Santa's woodland helper-goblins: there is Mimp who makes doll's house tea sets on a miniature potter's wheel, Delp who paints the tea sets, and Gink who bakes them: and distressingly there is Plop, the plump cook who makes Christmas toffee. (For many young children "plop" is a rude word that euphemises dung).

As with all the "Pookie" books the illustrations are full of delightful tiny detail of animals, their clothes and food and houses, and their woodland lives.
(Needless to say, these are mainly mammals, and some species of birds, plus assorted creatures of magic fairyland fantasy. No predators. Even the owls seem not to prey on mice or other small animals: and there are no foxes, unless they are vegetarian. But this IS a children's book.)

John Gough -- Deakin University -- [e-mail]