Our Featured Book for December is Santa’s Suit by Davide Cali and Eric Héliot. It’s a piece of pure entertainment for 4- to 7-year-olds that will leave you with a big smile on your face.

It’s set in the North Pole on Christmas Eve. Santa is getting ready for his big night out delivering presents, but can’t find his famous red suit. It turns out he’s done what many of us do—he’s thrown it in the laundry basket and forgotten about it. Now, when he needs it most, it’s dirty and—what’s worse—he’s also forgotten to fix the washing machine.

How does he find a new suit and deliver all the presents in just a couple of hours? Well, the solution involves his ingenious dog, Bobo, some red curtains and … well, you’ll have to read this hilarious book to find out the rest.

As well as some delightful humour and a tale with a lovely resolution, Santa’s Suit is also appealing for its use of a comic-style layout, complete with speech bubbles. This is unusual in picture books for the kindergarten/early primary school reader in Australia. In France, however, where the book was published originally, it is very common. When you think how many kids’ comics use this accessible format of storytelling, it’s really quite amazing we don’t see it more in books for this age group.