Silly Dilly Christmas Songs: Where Did They Hide my Presents

Reviewed: January 8, 2006
By: Alan Katz & David Catrow
Publisher: McElderry Books
32 pages, $22.95

Taking one last whack at Christmas, here’s a book you might like to have around for next year, when you’ve heard one too many carols. In this latest Silly Dilly book (there are two earlier ones) Katz and Catrow skewer the hopes and dreams of little children to the tunes of fourteen well known carols.

The title tune is sung to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

         Where did they hid my presents?

         That is what I’d like to know.

         Searching all night’s not pleasant.

         I looked high and low and low.

How about this, to “The Little Drummer Boy”?

         Dance, they told me.

         I’m the Sugarplum,

         A Nutcracker fairy

         And I feel so dumb.

         I hope I don’t fall down

         And land on my bum.

         Right now I wish I were as

         Small as Tom Thumb,

         Small as a crumb.

         I feel so glum.

You get the idea. Amusing rhymes that are pretty easy to fit to the music in your head (or out loud, if you dare) and illustrations that really do tell the story.

My wife, who insisted I review this one, thinks these fourteen mutant songs could be the makings of a really good Christmas concert. I can hear the wheels turning even now...

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