The Wheels on the Bus at Christmas

September 1, 2020
A familiar children's song gets a Christmas-carol reboot. A title-page map highlights various locations in a North Pole village, including Santa's house and a toy workshop. The ensuing pages, however, focus less on locale than they do on the passengers on a Christmassy bus driven by St. Nick himself. "Let's ride the bus on Christmas Eve, / Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve. / Let's ride the bus on Christmas Eve-- / who will we find inside?" Each verse features a different group of passengers with accompanying illustrations showing them riding this bus. First elves (pleasingly depicted with a range of racial presentations) go "Let's make toys!" then reindeer go "Jingle! Jingle! Jingle!" snowmen go "Brr! Brr! Brr!" and so on. (In a particularly silly touch, sentient cookies with tiny arms and legs go, "Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!") The busy, serviceable cartoon scenes don't show riders getting on and off, and the bus's interior seems magically cavernous as compared to illustrations of its exterior. The book concludes with a magical scene of the bus taking flight, the reindeer no longer passengers but harnessed to its front bumper and pulling it upward through the stars. Where are they going? "NEXT STOP: YOUR HOUSE!" reads knockout type against the dark blue sky. Yuletide fun for the youngest ones. (Picture book. 2-5)

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