North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus
Candace Jane Kringle aka Candycane Claus
Candace Jane Kringle aka Candycane Claus
Genre: YA
teen romance/humor/fantasy
Publisher: elfpublished
books
ISBN: 978-0615681917
Number of pages: 302
Word Count: 80,000
Cover Artist: Jessica
Weil
Book Description:
MEET SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD CANDYCANE CLAUS. She's the most
popular girl at North Pole High. Her father is world-famous. And every day is
Christmas. What more could any girl want?
BOYS! And the new boy, Rudy Tutti, is hot chocolate. But he hates anything to do with Christmas!
When Candy and Rudy are forced to work together on a school Christmas-tree project, her world is turned upside down: Her grades start to suffer, she loses her taste for ice cream, and now the two North-Star-cross'd teens must contend with her overprotective father — Santa Claus — before Christmas is ruined for EVERYONE!
BOYS! And the new boy, Rudy Tutti, is hot chocolate. But he hates anything to do with Christmas!
When Candy and Rudy are forced to work together on a school Christmas-tree project, her world is turned upside down: Her grades start to suffer, she loses her taste for ice cream, and now the two North-Star-cross'd teens must contend with her overprotective father — Santa Claus — before Christmas is ruined for EVERYONE!
Guest Post: The South Pole by Candycane Claus
The following excerpt tells the origin story of Chefy, our
seven-foot-tall penguin chef. It didn’t make the final draft of my book because
it didn’t advance the story. This is the very first time it’s being seen by
anyone outside of the Arctic Circle. Enjoy.
It all started long before I was born, but Chefy has told me the story
hundreds of times. Daddy was on summer expedition in the South Pole with the
reindeer and some of his top elves. There’s a flying seal down there named
Howard who’s been known to brainstorm with Daddy from time to time to help him
come up with new ideas for toys, though Daddy would never readily admit that.
He did openly credit Howard with inventing charades, but that’s not
really a toy. Still, the kudos Howard received from all around the world was
what got him thinking he deserved more recognition for all his intellectual
property. Pretty soon he had incorporated the South Pole Flying Seal Think Tank.
That’s what ultimately led to the North and South Polar Trade Agreement.
Well, there I go. I said I wouldn’t talk about my dad’s business. This
stuff isn’t exactly classified, though. Up here we learn about it in middle
school. Sixth-grade Polar History. Not many people between the Poles know about
it. Half of you think your presents come from your parents or department
stores, while the rest of you always generically reference the North Pole or
our world-famous Workshop as the exclusive point of origin of your toys. But at
the top and the bottom of the world (Southies hate being thought of as
bottoms), the Trade Agreement was supposedly a big deal at the time.
To save face for inadvertently causing this interpolar political crisis,
Daddy managed to negotiate a cultural exchange deal that would naturally work
out in our favor. We sent them the Abominable Snowman, and we got Chefy in
return. Or, I should say Daddy got Chefy.
It was meant to be a temporary arrangement. The Southies gladly sent
Yeti back when the time was up, and I heard it was quite pleasant here for that
century he was gone. But when it came time to send Chefy home, Daddy somehow
convinced him to stay. Because that’s the way Daddy rolls.
Chefy likes to pretend he resents his neverending tenure in the N.P.,
probably because he suspects Daddy tricked him into staying, but secretly I
think he feels way more appreciated here.
He was revered all over Antarctica back in the day. Blue whales
regularly brought him the most exotic ingredients to cook with, and a tribe of
Colossal Squid built a monument to Chefy underneath what is still known today
as Chefy Iceberg. But it was his own kind, the penguins, that disgusted him. I
can see why. He’d spend hours whipping up some super tasty work of art and
they’d go and regurgitate it all to feed their chicks.
“It loses more than a little of my nuanced flavors,” Chefy always said
whenever it came up -- no pun intended.
Copyright © 2012 by Candace Jane Kringle. All rights reserved.
Book Exceprt:
CHAPTER 1
Don’t get me wrong. I love my dad. Just not the way the rest of the
world loves him.
He’s not really all that holly-jolly the rest of the year. Someone once
asked me if I get presents every day because of who my dad is. That’s a laugh!
I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. He just doesn’t get me. I mean, he’s
great with kids and all. No question about it. But I’m sixteen. I’m
becoming a woman. And Daddy’s having a tough time with that. I imagine it’s
like that with most dads. Why should mine be any different?
So it’s not like I blame him or anything. I’m just saying, if he would
have let me be me, none of this would have happened.
But first, a couple things I have to get out of the way right from the
start. I get a lot of letters asking all kinds of questions about how my dad
slides down chimneys and stuff like that. Sorry, but that’s his
business. You’ll have to wait for him to write his own book. This is my
story. People don’t understand what it’s like growing up in this family. Sure,
there’s a lot of love and magic and joy. But I’m really just like everybody
else.
The other thing I need to make clear up front is: If you’re one of those
people who thinks my dad doesn’t exist, you might as well stop reading now.
This isn’t one of those stories. I’ve known the guy for sixteen years.
Believe me, he exists.
Now back to how this whole catastrophe started. Or rather, how it could
have been avoided. After all, I begged my father not to make me go to that
stupid Welcoming Feast.
It was still Daylight time—the beginning of the school year, before the
setting of the midnight sun would plunge us into six months of darkness. Not
dark darkness. Not Gothic vampire darkness or dystopian darkness. As a matter
of fact, the Dark season up here is actually quite pretty, for obvious reasons.
All the colorful lights, the sleigh bells ringing, the twinkling stars. It’s
kind of amazing.
Anticipating all the coming glad tidings, I skipped down Gingerbread
Lane—yes, I literally skipped home that day. I know. Pretty dorky. But when
you’re sixteen, you still get to be a kid even when you’re in that desperate
rush to grow the heck up.
Anyway, I slipped in through the side door of the unassuming A-frame at
the end of the quiet, snow-covered cul-de-sac and quickly pulled off my maroon
moon boots. I hung my candy-cane-striped coat on my special candy-cane hook in
the mudroom—candy canes are my namesake and style—then continued skipping
merrily into the kitchen.
Chefy stood hunched over the twelve-burner cast-iron stove. He craned
his thick neck, pointing his pencil-thin beak at me, the corners of his mouth
curling into something close to a smile as he stirred something delectable in a
five-gallon pot. “There’s my little princess. Was your teacher duly impressed
with your lovely little heart?”
Chefy gets me.
He was referring, of course, to the heart-shaped bauble I’d turned in
for Ornaments class. Was it any wonder I sometimes felt more like Chefy’s
little princess than my dad’s? I couldn’t remember the last time Daddy had
shown an interest in my homework, or even knew what classes I was taking. I
doubted he even knew my friends’ names.
Last year, I asked Daddy if Snowflake could come with us on the mall
tour.
“This is a business trip, Candy. We can’t have outsiders,” he’d said.
Outsiders? You’d think he didn’t know that Snowflake and I had been best
friends since preschool. Sure, he knows if all of you have been bad or good,
but he was sometimes pretty darn clueless when it came to his own daughter.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t always such a bad thing. I got away
with a lot. And it wasn’t like he had to worry about me becoming some kind of
’toehead or something. I always got good grades.
“I got an A-super-plus,” I answered Chefy.
The seven-foot-tall penguin frowned and said, “Shall I call that polar
bear and demand he give you an A-super-duper-plus?”
LOL! He would do it too.
“Oh, Chefy. That won’t be necessary. I’ll just have to try harder next
time.”
Chefy laughed and patted me on the head with a flipper while his other
flipper slid a plate of baked candy canes, fresh out of the oven, under my
still-frosty nose. Yum.
Daddy had originally brought Chefy up from the bottom for his legendary
culinary talents. But he’d become so much more than just a chef to us. He was
Daddy’s right hand. Not in the Workshop, mind you. Chefy would never have
anything to do with that toy stuff, thank you very much. However, he did
basically run our household. Even so, he never liked being thought of as
anything other than the best chef in the North Pole.
And he truly was. Take this after-school treat melting in my mouth, for
example. It wasn’t just that Chefy had thought to take vine-ripened candy canes
and wrap them in extra-virgin gingerbread dough. He had to wake up hours before
the rest of the family to handpick the juiciest canes from that garden he’d
cultivated in the custom-built greenhouse he designed himself. He wouldn’t have
it any other way. There was simply no limit to the pride Chefy took in his
creations.
As that warm, gooey goodness slid down my throat, I hungered for the
many other wondrous delicacies whose indescribable aromas made my tummy rumble
like a glacial avalanche. Then it hit me. White-chocolate truffles on the cob?
Lollipops in taffy fondue? Marzipan-glazed turkey stuffed with bubblegum? There
was way too much food here for just our family.
Chefy was preparing the Welcoming Feast—for that new kid!
About the Author:
Candace Jane Kringle is a junior at North Pole High. She
likes candy canes, unicorn races, and making snow angels. Her father is the
most well-known and beloved toymaker and distributor in the world. Her memoir, North
Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus, is her first book. After high school,
she plans to enroll at North Pole University and write more books.
0 comments:
Post a Comment