Humbug: The Elf Who Saved Christmas
Publisher: Scholastic
If you thought all Santa’s elves had hats with bells on and spent their days in a cheery workshop making toys for the big day, think again. Gristle P. Humbug and his family work in the Reindeer Poo Disposal department which is much less glamorous – and a lot more smelly!
Surely when Gristle and his sister find a lost Christmas letter in the snow, from a human child, they will be hailed as heroes and given an escape route from their life of drudgery?
Sadly not. Instead, the Humbug family find themselves on the run in a flying wheelie bin heading for Christmas with the humans. But it seems the elves’ vision of a human Christmas is just as unrealistic as our vision of theirs.
Featuring stolen mince pies, the fiercest grandma ever, a contrary reindeer and a riotous and irreverent look at the festive season, this is a book that, at its core, is about the true meaning of Christmas.
With the English language being used in a way never seen before, the underlying message amidst the chaos is ‘Giving expensive things isn’t the same as caring and unkindness will always result in you receiving poo.’