Review of “Santa, Elves, and Magical Bells” by Julie Chapman

Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

Santa, Elves, and Magical Bells is another fantastic children's holiday book by Julie Chapman!

Julie Chapman is the author of the OCA Best Children's Book of 2022, Witches, Bats, and Mystical Cats--the companion piece to this book. The writing and festive Halloween/Autumn spirit really carried the previous book.

Once again, the writing shines as Chapman gives children some tasty poetic verses as well as a lot to think about. The author employs mostly simplistic rhyme schemes (usually ABAB or AABB), however, this isn't necessarily a negative thing. These are tried and true rhyme schemes that children (and adults) have found rhythmic, fun, and entertaining for years. Young children in particular need this kind of writing to stay engaged.

This isn't just a book about celebrating various aspects of the holidays, but also learning about and appreciating each of these aspects in turn. This isn't just a Christmas book (as we initially thought); rather, it highlights various unique and special parts of the holiday season including Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years Day.

The book also explores the plight of animals like birds and cats during harsh winter months. It touches on the excitement of winter activities like hockey, snowman building, and sledding. The book even has a special section about dealing with a holiday crisis and for those suffering with illnesses like COVID (which tend to be more prevalent in the winter due to people being indoors and in closer vicinity to one another). We very much appreciated this.

The holidays aren't a perfect or even a happy time for everyone, and it was interesting to read a section showing empathy and understanding for that. The section in question personifies the moon as it observes those who are going through a difficult time during the holidays. This section is directly inspired by Christmas 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book, like its award-winning predecessor, plays out like a series of vignettes, each telling a different story or covering a different topic.

There is a section in here about Po the cat who finds a warm home after being found shivering and cold alongside an old barn. This story is short yet incredibly heartwarming. The unnamed little girl who rescues Po is already a nominee for “Best Character” for the season. Po can be seen throughout the book, and the readers are encouraged to find them. It's a fun little side-quest for the kids to engage with.

Apparently, the story of Po might have personal ties to the author's family as one of their rescue kittens is named Po.
The general story of Hanukkah is told in beautiful poetic verse. We were relieved and happy to see Jewish culture, history, and beliefs be represented in this book. It is possible that many western children may see a menorah during the holidays, and now they'll understand what its significance!

And, of course, the story of the nativity (the birth of Jesus) is told. This was probably our favorite part of the book since, in all honesty, Christmas is intended to celebrate this event, an event which quite literally changed history. The story of the nativity is actually told very well, again in beautiful poetic verse. We really loved the manger animals in the picture, particularly the camel and the lamb. Again, illustrator Anthony Richichi demonstrates how great he is at painting animals.

Anthony Richichi has effectively become the most prolific and winningest artist in the history of the Outstanding Creator Awards, being a part of probably over a dozen winning projects including Chapman's previous one. If there's one thing we've always wished he could do better, it's drawing people. His animals almost always look more detailed while his humans tend to appear very simplistic, sometimes being as simple as a circle or oval with hair and some eyes drawn in. This especially becomes apparent when he draws people from the side.

It seems like when he draws people from the side, they tend to lack depth. You can see one eye but not the other. You can see one side of the lip but not the other. It's almost as if the person doesn't have another side. There are two counter-example of that with the mothers/women on page 15 and 16. They naturally look much better than most of the other human characters in the book due to this. We wish that Richichi would try to incorporate that more. It reminds us of the joke about how professional wrestlers always watch the TV from the side, obviously having to do this for the camera/TV audience despite it being an unnatural viewing position. Well, it might seem more natural if the human characters and the objects they're interacting with were angled so we could see more of their depth.

His animals, again, look great. This is especially apparent with the highly detailed blue and red birds on page 6. We also have to admit that we noticed the human faces are actually better than some of Richichi's other works. Again, we thought the mothers/women on pages 15 and 16 looked great. Santa on page 19 looks good. The parents on page 14 look good.

Page 15 made us laugh a lot more than we should have. Perhaps that was the point. It's supposed to be a rather chaotic dinner scene. We couldn't help but laugh at how the two children are so excited to be eating green beans instead of meats or desserts. The mother is kinda glassy-eyed like she may have snuck a few sips of that drink beforehand. The baby is clearly unattended at the other side of the table unless grandma is somewhere off-screen. Lastly, the dog looks pretty eager to eat some of that ham.

We also noticed that the art and overall rendering of the book seemed to be superior to the last book. With the previous book, we noticed a slight loss in quality when we zoomed in (usually indicating a large file that needed to be compressed or re-rendered). This was not a problem with this book, possibly indicating that the author, illustrator, and formatter have improved in that regard.

Going back to the stories themselves, they each provide some fun, learning, and entertainment. Even our least favorite section, the one about fruitcake, enlightened and educated us about the history of fruitcake and why people still bother to make it (despite no one liking it).

Now, it did seem like this book was a little wordier than the last. It also often felt like the author was running out of space to share all of her great poetic verses, trying very hard to include so much information into a relatively small box. Due to this, it was natural for the author to make the font size smaller. This notably effected readability, but it's not too bad. That just means that you need to zoom in or come closer to the book at times.

Overall, this is another holiday home-run for Julie Chapman and Anthony Richichi!

Check it out on Amazon!