The Christmasaurus

by Tom Fletcher Narrated by Paul Shelley

Overview

Why settle for a pony or a puppy for Christmas when you could have a dinosaur? A rollicking adventure from singer-songwriter and YouTuber Tom Fletcher!

Once upon a time--long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth--an egg rolled away from its mother and landed in the ocean, where it froze solid and stayed peacefully for thousands of years. Then one day Santa and his elves discover the frozen egg, and Santa sits on it to see if it will hatch. But he can't guess what's inside. . . . A dinosaur!

Meanwhile, a young boy named William Trundle has only ever wished for one thing for Christmas: a dinosaur! So when Santa accidentally gives William the real Christmasaurus instead of a stuffed replica, it's the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER! Until an evil man known as the Hunter decides a dinosaur will be the perfect addition to his collection.

A wild and hilarious adventure ensues in this instant Christmas classic!

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

09/24/2018
In this quirky Christmas outing, William Trundle—a dinosaur enthusiast who is being teased by a bully because he uses a wheelchair—requests a real dinosaur from Santa. Luckily, a prologue explains, a single frozen dinosaur egg happens to have survived. Santa’s elves dig it up in the North Pole, and Santa reluctantly agrees to sit atop it (his “bum” is the only one big enough). Out hatches Christmasaurus: in Devries’s charming, grayscale art, the dino appears as a friendly creature with horns and a featherlike fringe around his neck. Christmasaurus—who doesn’t feel like he fits in among the elves, reindeer, and Santa—accidentally hitches a ride on the sleigh. Readers will guess that Christmasaurus and William are destined for one another—but first, a dastardly villain with a pipe and a pup intervenes. Making his middle grade debut, songwriter Fletcher offers a goofy-humored fantasy about differences, friendship, and holiday magic. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

Tom Fletcher is a creative and magical storyteller who is guaranteed to make readers laugh!” —James Patterson


"A sweet holiday story that would work well as a family read-aloud." —Booklist online

"Making his middle grade debut, songwriter Fletcher offers a goofy-humored fantasy about differences, friendship, and holiday magic." —Publishers Weekly

School Library Journal

08/12/2022

PreS-Gr 1—A small blue dinosaur who lives at the North Pole has one wish: to fly with Santa's reindeer on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, year after year, Santa's attempts to help the Christmasaurus achieve its wish to fly come to naught. So one Christmas, Santa allows the charming dino to join him in his sleigh. Despite Santa's admonition to stay put while packages are delivered, the Christmasaurus goes exploring and falls down a chimney, where it meets a young boy who uses a wheelchair. The child's belief in the Christmasaurus's ability to fly helps both go airborne. They fly to the North Pole, and at the end of the night, the Christmasaurus gets its wish to pull Santa's sleigh. This rhyming tale was inspired by an earlier middle grade novel written and illustrated by the same duo. The text is accompanied by colorful illustrations appropriately jolly for the season. They feature a tubby Santa, expressive elves, and a smiling wheelchair user. VERDICT Though not an essential purchase, this title is recommended for libraries looking to freshen up their holiday picture books with a positive message.—Maria B. Salvadore

Kirkus Reviews

2018-07-16
A boy asks Santa for a dinosaur and gets a life-changing experience.Cribbing freely from any number of classic Christmas stories and films, musician/vlogger Fletcher places his 10-year-old protagonist, William, who uses a wheelchair, at the head of an all-white human cast that features his widowed dad, a girl bully, and a maniacal hunter—plus a dinosaur newly hatched from an egg discovered in the North Pole's ice by Santa's elves. Having stowed away on Santa's sleigh, Christmasaurus meets and bonds with William on Christmas Eve, then, fueled by the power of a child's belief, flies the lad to the North Pole ("It's somewhere between Imagination and Make-Believe") for a meeting with the jolly toymaker himself. Upon his return William gets to see the hunter (who turns out to be his uncle) gun down his dad (who survives), blast a plush dinosaur toy to bits, and then with a poster-sized "CRUNCH! GULP!" go down Christmasaurus' hatch. In the meantime (emphasis on "mean"), after William spots his previously vicious tormenter, Brenda Payne, crying in the bushes, he forgives trespasses that in real life would have had her arrested and confined long ago. Seemingly just for laffs, the author tosses in doggerel-speaking elves (" ‘If it's a girl, can we call her Ginny?' / ‘I think it's a boy! Look, he's got a thingy!' ") and closes with further lyrics and a list of 10 (secular) things to love about Christmas. Devries adds sugary illustrations or spot art to nearly every spread.Reads like a grown-up's over-the-top effort to peddle a set of kid-friendly premises—a notion that worked for the author's The Dinosaur That Pooped a Planet (2017), but not here. (Fantasy. 9-11)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172110801
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/23/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

This story starts like all good stories do, a long time ago. Not just a long time ago, but a very, very, very long time ago. Squillions of years ago, in fact. Long before your granny and your granddad were born. Before there were any human beings at all. Before cars and airplanes, even before there was the internet, there was something even better. . . .
DINOSAURS!
Dinosaurs were the most awesome creatures ever to walk the planet. There were lots of them, and they came in all shapes and sizes. There were small ones that were not much bigger than dogs or cats, some with spiky prickle horns on their backs. There were stupendously ginormous ones called Seismosaurus that were longer than five double-decker buses, with necks thicker than tree trunks and skin like the hard rubber tires of a tractor. I know that sounds hard to believe, but it’s definitely true, because this is a book, and books don’t lie.
I’d like to tell you about two very special dinosaurs. We’ll call them Momosaurus and Dadlodocus. (Those weren’t their real names, of course—that would just be silly.)
Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had been out all day in the hot, hot heat of the prehistoric sun and were returning home to their tidy little nest. But what they found in its place was something horrendously horrible: an almighty pile of rocks, bones, and dust. Their home had been raided by evil scavenger dinosaurs, and these sneaky, scroungy little scavengers had smashed it up completely!
But for Momosaurus and Dadlodocus, the mess was the last thing on their minds, because they had left their most precious things alone inside the nest: twelve dinosaur eggs, which were now nowhere to be seen!
As you can imagine, Momosaurus and Dadlodocus were devastated. They stood in the wreckage of their nest, weeping and roaring for a very long time, until the sun went down and the moon and stars filled the sky above the jungle.
That night, a light breeze was blowing through the enormous trees, and a sliver of silvery moonlight found its way to the remains of the nest. Suddenly, something caught Dadlodocus’s eye. Something smooth and shiny was reflecting a moonbeam from under a pile of bones and mud. He quickly and gently lifted the rocks and rubble, and there it was, gleaming, perfectly unharmed in the moonlight.
It was their one last EGG.
How this one and only egg had escaped the hungry scavengers’ rampage was a mystery. Perhaps their greedy tummies were full up, or maybe this egg had rolled out of sight when they were smashing and crushing the others. Whatever the reason, all that mattered was that Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had one egg left. The tiny dinosaur that was curled up safely inside that egg became the most important thing in the world to them, and they weren’t going to let anything bad happen to it ever again!
But something bad was about to happen—something that would change the world forever.
Something big.
Something astronomically, intergalactically, outer spacey-wacey big!
The pearly moonlight that blanketed the dinosaurs’ broken nest suddenly seemed to turn yellow. Then the yellow turned orange and then to a hot, fiery red. Momosaurus and Dadlodocus peered out from their home, staring in disbelief. It was as though the moon itself was on fire!
As they watched, the whole sky turned into a violent fireworks display of whizzing hot rocks and shooting stars—and not the kind of shooting stars that you and I know, which swoosh prettily over the sky like beautiful little scratches of light in space. These ones didn’t swoosh by at all. These ones smashed straight down like red-hot thunderbolts that exploded into thousands of fireballs as they hit the Earth!
Panic and chaos consumed the jungle. Flaming trees were uprooted by huge, five-double-decker-bus-sized dinosaurs, and smaller dinosaurs were squished and trampled. The night sky was brighter than the lightest day, and the moon felt hotter than the midday sun— but there was only one thing on Momosaurus’s and Dadlodocus’s minds.
Protecting their egg!
They had to get their egg to safety!
So they ran. They ran as fast as their dinosaur feet could carry them, desperately clinging to that last, treasured egg. They joined the stampede of thousands of terrified dinosaurs fleeing the danger, but no matter how fast and how far they ran, they couldn’t seem to escape. After all, how can you run from the sky?
Momosaurus and Dadlodocus were swept into the crowd, pulled this way and pushed that way in a great sea of dinosaurs, and as hard as they tried, they just couldn’t hold on to their egg any longer!
It slipped from their grip and fell to the ground.
Now, I bet you’re thinking that the egg was crushed instantly, right? Well, smarty-pants, it wasn’t, actually!
A pile of leaves broke the egg’s fall, and it rolled into the stampede, unharmed. It was kickerbashed and knockerboshed every which way—but it still didn’t crack! Momosaurus and Dadlodocus chased after it as it bounced between giant Diplodocus legs and rolled under stomping Stegosaurus feet, narrowly avoiding being squished time after time. It rolled and rolled, as if it had a mind of its own, falling from rocky ledges to treetops and swooshing down slushy mudslides, as Momosaurus and Dadlodocus desperately chased after it.
If Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had been looking up at the sky instead of trying to find their egg, they would have seen such a terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly, frighteningly scary sight. The whole sky was on fire above them. What they had thought was the flaming moon was, in fact, a whopping, giganterrific planet smasher of a meteorite. It had traveled from the deepest depths of space and was about to smash-whack into planet Earth and wipe out all the dinosaurs forever!
But just before the meteorite did its planet smashing, the lucky egg rolled all the way to the edge of a tall, jagged cliff, high above the ferocious ocean. All Momosaurus and Dadlodocus could do was watch helplessly as their last precious egg, with their tiny baby dinosaur inside, calmly toppled over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.
Gone forever.
The egg fell straight down, missing the rocky face of the cliff by inches. This was a very lucky egg indeed! It plopped peacefully into the ocean below, like a pebble in a lake, and instantly sank deep into the darkness, leaving the fiery chaos of the world above the waves. Eventually it came to rest on a soft, sheltered spot on the ocean floor as the meteor shower it left behind rained down unforgivingly, destroying every living dinosaur on the planet.
Except one.
The one inside the egg!
While the egg lay peacefully at the bottom of the ocean, the world continued to burn—and then it froze solid, in an ice age that would last for thousands of years.
There the egg remained, deep in the ice, frozen in time, just waiting to be discovered. . . .

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