Will Christmas ever be the same again?
Gabriela Harding’s debut children’s novel, Santa Claws, is set in the London suburbs and the wilderness of the High Arctic. It is a Christmas adventure narrated by Honey, who presents readers with festive terrors and an evil Santa.
It’s Christmas Eve and Honey is home alone. Well, alone if she doesn’t count the boring company of her little brother, Teddy, and her grandmother, who is a little too fond of sherry. She doesn’t think Christmas can get any worse. But when Honey and Teddy are brutally kidnapped from their own home, this festive season soon becomes the worst Christmas ever...
After waking up in a freezing land of horrors, they are forced into hard labour in a factory of nasty toys amidst evil dwarves and the evil Santa Claws. Honey and her brother fear for their lives in a world of child-eating dogs, murderous chefs and secret passages dripping with all things icky. Worse still, Santa Claws turns out to be a cannibal with a very special dish in mind for the New Year’s celebrations: his own brother, the real Santa Claus.
Can Honey and Teddy save Santa from the cooking pot and free themselves from a life of whip-cracking dwarves and slave labour? Santa Claws is aimed at children between 11-14 who enjoy mystery and fantasy fiction with traces of dark humour.