This is a great middle grade Christmas story.

The mayor of the Halloween town of Sleepy Hollow doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas. He fills the town with Halloween parodies of Christmas carols. One is “Jingle bells, Santa smells, A hundred miles away.” Another is “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, Had a very bloody nose.” I can imagine kids singing these parodies after reading this book!

The whole story is a Christmas Carol. The chapters are called verses, so they seem to be part of a song. At the end, Harry sings his own Christmas carol too.

This story shows the power of Christmas magic. Harry and his friends use Harry’s magic to rescue his friend Samson. But the real Christmas spirit didn’t come from magic. Harry and his new friend Thor find a way to give the town a Christmas celebration.

I really liked this book. It’s a great Christmas story!

Don’t be afraid of the dark.

It’s Christmas time in Sleepy Hollow, or ‘Spooky Town’ as evil mayor Maximus Kligore turned the town into when it became a Halloween tourist attraction year round. Now, I’m all for year round Halloween festivities (Bah humbug!) but Harry Moon is on a mission to light up the pervading darkness of the town.

Harry’s magic teacher and friend, Samson, has been attacked by the mayor and his evil hordes’ Fouling Curse, and it’s up to Harry and his Good Mischief Team to battle evil toys and the powers of darkness to save Samson - along with the town’s Christmas spirit. Along the way Harry makes a new friend, learning not to judge someone by their outward appearance.

I loved the inventiveness of the anti-Christmas carols that the evil mayor pumps through the town’s airwaves, and replacing chapter with verse was a simple yet appropriate nod to the carols, anti and otherwise, that featured in the book. My favourite descriptions related to the colours of Lady Dra Dra’s wigs, which at one point was puke-lemon.

The illustrations were a great blend of Christmas and Halloween, with the images at the beginning of each chapter foreshadowing an event to come. I find the expressions on the character’s faces in the illustrations for this series are particularly wonderful, especially the evil grin on the mayor’s face in this book.

I’m not quite sure why Jesus couldn’t just be called Jesus. It is a Christmas book after all and while He is referred to as the Great Magician, in keeping with the magical aspects throughout the series, it irked me. There are sections where the Bible is either quoted or paraphrased during the book but at no time are these attributed as such. I did think that the Mr B.L. Zebub character’s name was clever though.

I expects children will love reading about the different varieties of jellybeans described - blue Penguin Poop, purple Reindeer Poop, and for when the purple inevitably sells out there’s the standby red and green swirled Elf Poop! The Halloween fans will also appreciate the town’s festive decorations - green dragon tails forming garlands and light posts wrapped with white bandages mixed with fake blood to imitate candy canes.

Favourite sentence: “For the Great Magician and his deep magic can best be seen in the selfless love between one to another.”

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley (thank you so much to NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors for the opportunity) in exchange for honest feedback.

I really enjoyed that they author put a character list in the book so you knew who everyone was right away. This was a different twist on the classic holiday story in a town that believes in halloween 24/7. I am looking forward to reading more in this series as it was a fun light read.

Review: HARRY MOON'S CHRISTMAS CAROL COLOR EDITION by Mark Andrew Poe

When a small community succumbs to anxiety, despair, and economic fear, evil makes inroads, promising solutions (and fomenting greed and cruelty). And where evil makes inroads, the good get going. In the once peaceful community of Sleepy Hollow, Massachusetts (NOT the Sleepy Hollow of Washington Irving!) for the past 15 years, Mayor Kilgore has preyed on the economic fears of the townsfolk and turned the community into "every night is Halloween!" To feed his greed, he treats with darkness, and darkness responds.

Arrayed against darkness are 13-year-old eight-grader Harry Moon and 10-year-old sister Honey Moon, and their respective mentors, magic store owner Solomon Dupree, and the town's librarian. In this engaging series, good magic battles against the ever-encroaching spread of darkness, which sometimes seems irredeemable and indefensible. Harry and Honey will encourage middle-graders to "do the right thing," no matter how difficult, no matter the peer pressure.