North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus by Candace Jane Kringle aka Candycane Claus
Genre: YA
teen romance/humor/fantasy
Publisher: elfpublished
books
ISBN: 978-0615681917
Number of pages: 302
Word Count: 80,000
Cover Artist: Jessica
Weil
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Synopsis:
MEET SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD CANDYCANE CLAUS. She's the most
popular girl at North Pole High. Her father is world-famous. And every day is
Christmas. What more could any girl want?
BOYS! And the new boy, Rudy Tutti, is hot chocolate. But he hates anything to
do with Christmas!
When Candy and Rudy are forced to work together on a school Christmas-tree
project, her world is turned upside down: Her grades start to suffer, she loses
her taste for ice cream, and now the two North-Star-cross'd teens must contend
with her overprotective father — Santa Claus — before Christmas is ruined for
EVERYONE!
Background: Candy Cane Claus is a sixteen year old who is living it up in the North Pole as the daughter of none-other-than THE Santa Claus. When a new kid comes to town her holly filled Christmas cheer is thrown all out of whack. There are two boy fighting over her and she doesn't even know who she likes more, and to top it all off her father doesn't even know she is dating already.
Review: This book is Christmas cheer in between its covers. Candy is a hilarious narrator for the story as she tells the tale of the craziness that insured in her life. I absolutely LOVE Christmas, not really the presents but the songs and decorations and the snow; and this book had it all! The characters that all live in the North Pole all have holiday based names/ nicknames, refer to Christmas excessively, and eat things like Fruitcake topped pizza... so this was amazingly fun to read.
The characters were fun, I am glad that it wasn't just a normal Santa Claus story. We meet the whole Claus family and all of Candy's friends, including Tinsel, Snowflake, and Silentnight. They played off of one another well throughout the story.
The plot was fun, cheerful for the most part, and energetic. I read through it in only a matter of a few days. In its roots it is a Christmas tale of miracles and cheer, but it is also a teen romance of sorts which was playful.
If you enjoy humor, Christmas, a good teen love, this book is definitely for you!
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Don’t get me wrong. I love my dad. Just not
the way the rest of the world loves him.
He’s not really all that holly-jolly the rest of the year. Someone
once asked me if I get presents every day because of who my dad is.
That’s a laugh!
I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. He just doesn’t get me. I mean,
he’s great with kids and all. No question about it. But I’m sixteen. I’m becoming a woman. And Daddy’s having
a tough time with that. I imagine it’s like that with most dads. Why
should mine be any different?
So it’s not like I blame him or anything. I’m
just saying, if he would have let me be me, none of this would have
happened.
But first, a couple things I have to get out of
the way right from the start. I get a lot of letters asking all kinds
of questions about how my dad slides down chimneys and stuff like that.
Sorry, but that’s his business. You’ll have to wait for him to write
his own book. This is my story. People don’t understand what it’s
like growing up in this family. Sure, there’s a lot of love and magic
and joy. But I’m really just like everybody else.
The other thing I need to make clear up front
is: If you’re one of those people who thinks my dad doesn’t exist,
you might as well stop reading now. This isn’t one of those stories. I’ve known the guy for sixteen years.
Believe me, he exists.
Now back to how this whole catastrophe started.
Or rather, how it could have been avoided. After all, I begged my father
not to make me go to that stupid Welcoming Feast.
It was still Daylight time—the beginning of
the school year, before the setting of the midnight sun would plunge
us into six months of darkness. Not dark darkness. Not Gothic vampire
darkness or dystopian darkness. As a matter of fact, the Dark season
up here is actually quite pretty, for obvious reasons. All the colorful
lights, the sleigh bells ringing, the twinkling stars. It’s kind of
amazing.
Anticipating all the coming glad tidings, I skipped
down Gingerbread Lane—yes, I literally skipped home that day. I know.
Pretty dorky. But when you’re sixteen, you still get to be a kid even
when you’re in that desperate rush to grow the heck up.
Anyway, I slipped in through the side door of
the unassuming A-frame at the end of the quiet, snow-covered cul-de-sac
and quickly pulled off my maroon moon boots. I hung my candy-cane-striped
coat on my special candy-cane hook in the mudroom—candy canes are
my namesake and style—then continued skipping merrily into the kitchen.
Chefy stood hunched over the twelve-burner cast-iron
stove. He craned his thick neck, pointing his pencil-thin beak at me,
the corners of his mouth curling into something close to a smile as
he stirred something delectable in a five-gallon pot. “There’s my
little princess. Was your teacher duly impressed with your lovely little
heart?”
Chefy gets me.
He was referring, of course, to the heart-shaped
bauble I’d turned in for Ornaments class. Was it any wonder I sometimes
felt more like Chefy’s little princess than my dad’s? I couldn’t
remember the last time Daddy had shown an interest in my homework, or
even knew what classes I was taking. I doubted he even knew my friends’
names.
Last year, I asked Daddy if Snowflake could come
with us on the mall tour.
“This is a business trip, Candy. We can’t
have outsiders,” he’d said.
Outsiders? You’d think he didn’t know that
Snowflake and I had been best friends since preschool. Sure, he knows
if all of you have been bad or good, but he was sometimes pretty darn
clueless when it came to his own daughter.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t always such
a bad thing. I got away with a lot. And it wasn’t like he had to worry
about me becoming some kind of ’toehead or something. I always got
good grades.
“I got an A-super-plus,” I answered Chefy.
The seven-foot-tall penguin
frowned and said, “Shall I call that polar bear and demand he give
you an A-super-duper-plus?”
LOL! He would do it too.
“Oh, Chefy. That won’t be necessary. I’ll
just have to try harder next time.”
Chefy laughed and patted me on the head with a
flipper while his other flipper slid a plate of baked candy canes, fresh
out of the oven, under my still-frosty nose. Yum.
Daddy had originally brought Chefy up from the
bottom for his legendary culinary talents. But he’d become so much
more than just a chef to us. He was Daddy’s right hand. Not in the
Workshop, mind you. Chefy would never have anything to do with that
toy stuff, thank you very much. However, he did basically run our household.
Even so, he never liked being thought of as anything other than the
best chef in the North Pole.
And he truly was. Take this after-school treat
melting in my mouth, for example. It wasn’t just that Chefy had thought
to take vine-ripened candy canes and wrap them in extra-virgin gingerbread
dough. He had to wake up hours before the rest of the family to handpick
the juiciest canes from that garden he’d cultivated in the custom-built
greenhouse he designed himself. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
There was simply no limit to the pride Chefy took in his creations.
As that warm, gooey goodness slid down my throat,
I hungered for the many other wondrous delicacies whose indescribable
aromas made my tummy rumble like a glacial avalanche. Then it hit me.
White-chocolate truffles on the cob? Lollipops in taffy fondue? Marzipan-glazed
turkey stuffed with bubblegum? There was way too much food here for
just our family.
Chefy was preparing the Welcoming Feast—for that new kid!
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About the Author:
Candace Jane Kringle is a junior at North Pole High. She
likes candy canes, unicorn races, and making snow angels. Her father is the
most well-known and beloved toymaker and distributor in the world. Her memoir, North
Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus, is her first book. After high school,
she plans to enroll at North Pole University and write more books.
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