"This is terrific!"

Paul Fleck, executive, Paramount Films

"Perfect illustrations!"

Matt Taylor, animator, Warner Bros. Studios

"A great looking book!"

Tracy Nelson, owner, A Child Dreams a Good Book

"Great!"

Darren Kirby, producer, Catalyst Productions

Winter Vacation should be about sledding and having snowball fights. Unfortunately, while the weather is cold here in Southern California, usually it's only cold enough, or wet enough, to keep all our children stuck inside. All that's left to do is watch TV or play video games. Believe it or not, after a while kids will get bored.

Before Christmas, children eagerly anticipate the Holiday. They have presents to wish for, Santa Claus to visit, and they have plenty of Holiday stories to read. All changes in the two weeks following the Holidays. The decorations are put away for another year. The Christmas trees are thrown out. All the stories are put back on the shelves for another year. There is nothing left to look forward to except going back to school.

Local author Donna Getzinger has created the cure for the post-Holiday blabs. In her new children's novel Saving Christmas Spirit, published by Shadowbox Media Publishing, Getzinger creates a fantasy adventure story about the weeks after Christmas. This action-packed story about five children working to keep Christmas spirit from being destroyed by the Elves of Christmas Greed is one of a kind. No other book on the shelves is written about the days after Christmas, and no other book is a more appropriate read to fill those boring late-December, early-January afternoons.

Saving Christmas Spirit is written for eight to twelve year old readers. Younger children will enjoy having it read to them This provides some excellent family time that may have lapsed a bit since the rush of the Holidays ended. All children will enjoy the cartoon-like illustrations by successful animator Ernie Gilbert.

Getzinger remembers being extremely bored during all her vacations when she was a child in Irvine, California. Winter Break tended to be the most boring of all. Granted, the Cartoon Network didn't exist back then. Still, even with her Atari video games and two brothers to bother, she found most of her entertainment in books. Her favorite books at the time were fantasy novels The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Wizard of Oz. She wrote Saving Christmas Spirit to give children today the same thrill and escape she got reading those great fantasies. In fact, she has even dedicated her novel to the life of L. Frank Baum.

The title of Saving Christmas Spirit gives away the theme of the book. Getzinger's favorite Christmas Carol has a line that goes "It's not the things you do at Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do all year through. This lyric motivates much of the story as her main character Hayley Cummings has to understand what Christmas spirit is all about before she can help save it from being destroyed. This is an important message for children today who confuse the true meaning of the Holidays with the commercial hype around it.