Review: Letters to Never Send Santa

Written by David Griswold

Illustrated by Luis San Vicente

Fresno, CA: Moonshower, an imprint of Bushel & Peck Books, 2024. Picture Book.

Most letters to Santa are very polite and full of "pleases" and "thank yous." These are not those letters. This collection of poems in different formats tell the story of children begging for Santa to overlook their misdeeds, elves on strike, disgruntled parents, Vixen quitting, a love letter, and more. These letters that you most definitely should not send to Santa are laugh out loud funny and illustrations are personalized for each letter, some with childish scrawl and some with formal business formatting.

This book would make a great family read aloud, especially if you wanted to choose one or two a day to read. With how many different rhyme patterns there were, this would be a great exercise to study rhyme schemes. I really liked how the illustrations are drawn to look like documents, for example, there's a diagram of a chimney depicting how he couldn't possibly fit and a proposed sliding-scale of goodness to replace the dichotomy of naughty vs. nice. Overall a very clever book of poems sure to help kids be a little more appreciative for what they get for Christmas.

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