Father Christmas and Me. Matt Haig

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      As well as being a number one bestselling writer for adults, Matt Haig has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal for his stories for children and young adults. The idea for the Christmas series came when his son asked what Father Christmas was like as a boy

      Chris Mould went to art school at the age of sixteen. He has won the Nottingham Children's Book Award and been commended by the Sheffield Children's Book Award. He loves his work and likes to write and draw the kind of books that he would have liked to have had on his shelf as a boy. He is married with two children and lives in Yorkshire.

       Also by Matt Haig

      The Girl Who Saved Christmas

      A Boy Called Christmas

      Echo Boy

      To Be A Cat

      The Runaway Troll

      Shadow Forest

      Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,

      14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © Matt Haig, 2017

      Illustrations © Chris Mould, 2017

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 072 6

      eISBN 978 1 78689 076 4

      Typeset in Bembo by

      Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

       For Pearl, Lucas and Andrea

      Contents

       Somewhere Else

       7 Reindeer Road

       Hope Toffee

       Mother Christmas

       My First Year at Elf School

       The Sleigh Ride

       The Cat and the Reindeer

       The Hole

       Cloudberry Pie

       The Bank of Chocolate

       The Greatest Magic of All

       Toys That Spin or Bounce

       The Daily Snow

       The Outsider

       The Elves on the Doorstep

       The Letter Catcher

       A Deal with the Truth Pixie

       Into the Tunnel

       The Easter Bunny

       A Lesson on How to Love Life

       The Bank Robber

       In the Cages

       Death by Chocolate

       Impossible Things

       A Hidden Humdrum

       The Intruders

       A Final Smile

       The bit after the book where you thank people

       Somewhere Else

      ou might think you know about Father Christmas. And I’m sure you do know some things. You probably know about the Toy Workshop and the reindeer. You know what happens every Christmas Eve. Of course you do.

      But the thing you probably don’t know about is me.

      I will start by telling you the things that are easy to believe.

      My name is Amelia Wishart and I have a black cat called Captain Soot. I was born in London, and I lived there until I was eleven years old. And then I lived somewhere else.

      It is the somewhere else that you might find a bit unlikely.

      I suppose I could tell you that I moved to Finland, and you would have no problem believing that, because Finland is on a map. And it is, technically, true. I did move to Finland, in the far far far North, beyond the bit of Finland known as Lapland. The somewhere else I lived was simply called the Far North and the town was Elfhelm. Now, Elfhelm isn’t on any maps. Not human ones, anyway. And the reason for this is that most people can’t see it. It’s invisible to them. You see, Elfhelm is a magical place, and to see magical places you have to believe in magic. And the type of humans who draw all the maps are the people least likely to believe in magic.

      But Elfhelm is an ordinary town in lots of ways. A small town. An oversized village, really. And there are normal things there, like shops and houses and a town hall. There are streets and trees and even a bank.

      But the people who live there are very different to me. And very different to you too.

      They