Frost and the Mailman (2 page)

Frost drew up a contract where the North Pole would supply Big Jim with coats and in exchange all the mail would be released and any future mail would be forwarded to Santa.

Then Big Jim, Daniel and Frost loaded up the mail in the sleigh.
But when the sleigh was full, there were still hundreds of bags leftover.
Time was getting short.

“I don’t know what to do!”
Frost said.

“How about penguins?”
Daniel said.
“Can’t we recruit them to help?”

“Penguins don’t fly!”
Frost said.

“Neither do reindeer,” Daniel said.

Frost snapped her fingers!

“Of course!
I’ll just put some of the reindeer dust on the penguins.”

They headed over to Penguin Island and found a willing group of penguin volunteers, and soon all the mail was headed toward the North Pole.

“Thank you so much,” Frost said.
“You’ve saved Christmas, Daniel!”

“Yeah,” Daniel said.
“No problem.”

But Frost noticed that Daniel looked very, very sad.

“What’s wrong?”
she asked.
“You’re a hero!”

“Well,” Daniel said.
“The sun is setting and it’s the first night of Chanukah.”

“Oh,” Frost said.

“Usually I’m at my sister’s house.
But I’ll never make it in time.”

“Well, what do we need?”
Frost said.

“What?”
Daniel asked.

“Can’t we have Chanukah here?”
Frost said.
“I have a comfy house and I have friends and family.
We could invite them over and then get you back in time for your family tomorrow.”

Daniel told Frost all that they needed and it seemed easy enough.
And as the sun set, they lit the candles.

And Daniel and Frost were glad, because in the end both holidays had been saved.

CECIL CASTELLUCCI

Cecil Castellucci’s novels for young adults include
First Day On Earth
,
Rose Sees Red
and
Boy Proof
.
She also wrote the graphic novels
The PLAIN Janes
and
Janes in Love
illustrated by Jim Rugg.
She was an elf at Macy’s Santaland for two years during college where she helped kids tell Santa what was on their holiday wish list.
In addition to writing books, she writes plays, operas, makes movies, does performance pieces and occasionally rocks out.
For more information go to
www.misscecil.com

…

Jen Wang (cover illustration) is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Los Angeles.
Her first book
Koko Be Good
is available through First Second Books.

ALSO BY CECIL CASTELLUCCI

Boy Proof
– Victoria, aka Egg, is too obsessed with a post-apocalyptic science fiction film to be bothered with friends, much less members of the opposite sex.
But then Egg meets a boy named Max, a boy who’s smart and funny and creative and cool.

Roses Sees Red
– Rose, a lonely American ballerina and Yrena a girl from the Soviet Union form an unlikely friendship in during a 24 hour romp through New York City in 1982.

First Day on Earth
– Mal thinks he’s been abducted by aliens and starts going to an alien abduction support group where he meets Hooper, who may or may not be a traveller from another world.

Geektastic
– An anthology of short stories by geeks about geeks.