Selby Santa Read online

The elf next to him did the same, and then the one next to him as well. A wave of silence rolled through the workshop as all the elves shut down their machinery.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Santa said in a jolly voice.

  ‘We’re sick of Christmas!’ an elf yelled. ‘We do all the work and you get all the credit!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You get stacks and stacks of letters from kids thanking you for this and thanking you for that. We’re the ones who make the toys but do we ever get a letter?’

  ‘No way!’ all the elves yelled.

  ‘We work all year long and you only work for one night!’ another elf called out. ‘It’s not fair!’

  ‘Goodness me,’ Santa said,‘I had no idea you felt this way. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say that Christmas is cancelled from now on because we’re not going to take it any more!’ an elf in the back called out. ‘It used to be fun when we got to make nice little wooden soldiers and stuff. But now kids only want things that you buy in shops, so we have to make toys that look like them. It’s not fun any more! If I have to make another DVD, I think I’ll throw up!’

  Selby watched as the elves put on their pointy green hats and started to leave the workshop.

  ‘Hold on!’ Selby called out. ‘You’re making a big mistake.’

  ‘Who are you?’ an elf asked.

  ‘I’m Selby, the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world. But never mind about that. I love you little guys.’

  ‘You do?’ another elf said.

  ‘Yes. You don’t know how important you are.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘You make kids all over the world happy. I know that it can’t be easy or fun to make all those prezzies —’

  ‘Prezzies?’

  ‘Presents. That’s the way we say it in Australia,’ Selby explained. ‘If you cancel Christmas, think of how sad the kids will be. Think of kids getting up in the morning and, okay, getting some presents but not getting one from Santa Claus — which of course is really from you guys. Just imagine the tears in their eyes.’

  ‘I can imagine that,’ an elf said.

  ‘You guys are loved, you just don’t know it. Okay, so Santa should probably tell you sometimes.’

  ‘I should?’ Santa said. ‘Yes, I guess I should. I had no idea that you weren’t happy little chappies.’

  ‘Yours is the most wonderful work in the world,’ Selby went on. ‘Never before has so much been done for so many by so few … short people. Think of all the happiness you give. Please, on behalf of all the kids, I beg you to go back to work.’

  The elves stood there silently. Soon there was whispering and then mumbling and then talking and finally one of them yelled, ‘He’s right! The dog is right!’

  ‘Come on, guys!’ another elf called out. ‘Let’s get this job done!’

  One by one the machines started up and a buzz and a hum filled the workshop again.

  ‘Selby, that was wonderful,’ Santa said. ‘You’re a very good speaker. You should do it more often. I had no idea they were unhappy. Selby, you’ve saved Christmas. Now, there’s no time to waste. I’d better get back to my deliveries.’

  Santa grabbed his bag and he and Selby hopped into the sleigh. The next thing Selby knew, he was lying on the Trifles’ carpet in Bogusville and it was morning.

  ‘Hey! Where’s Santa?’ he thought. ‘He was here, wasn’t he? I mean I did go to the North Pole, didn’t I?’

  Soon the Trifles were up and opening presents. They got all the presents that you read about in the previous story and then …

  ‘Look, there’s one last present,’ Mrs Trifle said, pulling it out. ‘It’s for Selby. I don’t remember seeing this before.’

  ‘Neither do I and I checked all the prezzies,’ Selby thought.

  Mrs Trifle opened the package. It was a little wooden carved elf with a green suit and a pointy green hat. The elf was pointing his finger and winking.

  ‘Goodness me,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘It’s quite beautiful. It looks like one of those old toys I got when I was a kid. Who’s it from?’

  ‘The card just says, From Santa and the elves,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Who could that be? Oh, I know, it’s probably from Jetty and Willy and Billy. Elves — that’s a good name for them,’ she added with a laugh. ‘Hey, take a picture of Selby with his elf. Look, the camera’s over there on the carpet. I wonder how it got there.’

  Dr Trifle grabbed the camera and turned it on.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said,‘have a look at this.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Selby thought. ‘I forgot to delete the photo of Santa! Now his secret will be out! What will I do? I wanted to take the picture to prove to everyone that Santa is real but now I don’t want do it! It will ruin the magic of Christmas! Oh woe woe woe, what can I do?’

  As Dr Trifle was handing the camera to Mrs Trifle, a paw shot out as quick as Santa’s reindeer. There was a soft sound from inside the camera.

  ‘The picture disappeared,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘It was like it deleted itself. What was it? I didn’t quite see it.’

  ‘I could have sworn it was a picture of Santa Claus standing next to our Christmas tree,’ Dr Trifle said.

  ‘A photo of the real Santa?’

  ‘Yes, but if it was, I can’t imagine who could have taken it. It seemed to have appeared and disappeared by magic. Maybe that’s what they mean by the magic of Christmas.’

  Dr and Mrs Trifle smiled at each other and then gave Selby a pat.

  ‘You’re the dearest, most wonderful people on Earth,’ Selby thought, as he struggled to keep from smiling. ‘And you’ve just seen a bit of the magic of Selby.’

  SANTA’S REINDEER

  by Selby Trifle

  As Santa said to Mrs Claus

  When off to the drier parts of Oz

  I’ll make them happy, never fear,

  This Christmas I’ll bring rain, Dear.

  Paw note: ‘Oz’ is another name for Australia.

  S

  SELBY’S JOKE BOOK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A book like this isn’t made by one person alone, so the author would particularly like to thank the following people: Jill Quin, Jo Butler, Lisa Berryman, Shona Martyn, Cristina Cappelluto, Sam Rich and Barbara Mobbs. And many thanks to all the kids who have written encouraging letters and emails to me. I’d especially like to thank Jackson Ellery-Higgins and Riley Cockerill. As always, many thanks to Allan Stomann for his excellent illustrations.

  About the Author

  Duncan Ball is an Australian author who writes popular books for children. This book, Selby Santa, is the fifteenth story collection about Selby, ‘the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world’. There is also a collection of Selby stories taken from the other books called Selby’s Selection, and two jokes books: Selby’s Joke Book and Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book.

  Duncan has also written the Emily Eyefinger books, a series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels Piggott Place and Piggotts in Peril about the frustrations of a twelve-year-old boy, Bert Piggott, in a never-ending struggle to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of trouble.

  Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Duncan is sure that Jasper can’t talk and can’t understand people-talk but he seems to know about Christmas. He spends a lot of time looking at the presents under the Christmas tree and is always especially interested in a little present wrapped up for him (a tin of extra-special cat food).

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Emily Eyefinger

  Emily Eyefinger, Secret Agent

  Emily Eyefinger and the Lost Treasure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Black Volcano

  Emily Eyefinger’s Alien Adventure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Devil Bones

  Emily Eyefinger and the Balloon Bandits

  Emily Eyefinger and the Ghost Ship

&nb
sp; Emily Eyefinger and the Puzzle in the Jungle

  Emily Eyefinger and the City in the Sky

  Piggott Place

  Piggotts in Peril

  The Case of the Graveyard Ghost and Other Mysteries

  The Case of the Vampire’s Wire and Other Mysteries

  Selby’s Secret

  Selby Screams

  Selby Spacedog

  Selby Surfs

  Selby’s Joke Book

  Selby’s Selection

  Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book

  Selby Sorcerer

  Selby Speaks

  Selby Supersnoop

  Selby Snowbound

  Selby Snaps!

  Selby Splits

  Selby’s Stardom

  Selby Scrambled

  Selby Shattered

  Selby’s Shemozzle

  Copyright

  Angus&Robertson

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia

  First published in Australia in 2007

  This edition published in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Text copyright © Duncan Ball 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Allan Stomann 2007

  The right of Duncan Ball and Allan Stomann to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London, W6 8JB, United Kingdom

  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Ball, Duncan

  Selby Santa / Duncan Ball.

  ISBN: 978-0-7322-8679-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN: 978-0-7304-9513-0 (ePub)

  1. Christmas stories. I Stomann,Allan. II.Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and design by Matt Stanton