Free A Katie Kazoo Christmas by Nancy Krulik

shouted into the living room. “Mom, can I go to Jeremy’s tomorrow morning instead of the mall?”
    “Sure,” Mrs. Carew agreed. “As long as his mother doesn’t mind.”
    “I can come!” Katie told Jeremy happily.
    “Cool. See you tomorrow,” Jeremy said.
    After she hung up with Jeremy, Katie walked back into the living room. The tree was brightly lit. The room smelled like pine needles and Christmas cookies. And there was so much snow falling outside. Everything seemed so Christmassy.
    Suddenly, Katie didn’t care about the crowds in the mall and all the lines she’d had to wait in all day. That was part of Christmas. Just like wrapping gifts, baking cookies, spending time with friends, and singing Christmas songs.
    “Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” she began to sing.
    “Fa la la la la, la la la la,” her parents chimed in.
    “AROOOOO!” Soon, even Pepper was singing.
    Katie gave her dog a big hug. She smiled at her parents. There was a lot of love in her living room. That was the best Christmas present she could have . . .
    And it didn’t need any gift wrap at all!

The Santa Switch

Chapter 1
    “Okay, Katie, it’s your turn,” Mr. Guthrie said. “Whose Secret Santa will you be?”
    Katie looked at the red-and-white Santa Claus hat her teacher was holding. Inside were lots of folded pieces of paper. Each paper had a name written on it. The person whose name she picked would be the person she would have to buy gifts for. That was how Secret Santa worked.
    “I hope you get my name,” Emma Weber whispered as Katie stuck her hand into the hat. “You’d be a great Secret Santa.”
    Katie hoped she picked Emma’s name from the hat, too. Emma was one of her closest friends. It would be easy to buy presents for her.

    Katie reached all the way down to the bottom of the hat and pulled out one of the slips of paper. Then she slowly opened it and read the name:
    KADEEM CARTER
    Oh, well. She was just going to have to think a little harder to come up with good gifts.
    “Okay, now that everyone has picked a name, I’ll tell you the rules,” Mr. G. said. “You will have to buy the person whose name you drew three gifts. The first two gifts should cost no more than one dollar each. The third present is the big gift. You may spend up to five dollars on that one.”
    Katie did the math in her head. Seven dollars. That was three more than she had in her bank at home. It would be Sunday until she would get her allowance. She sure hoped Mr. G. would give them some time before the first Secret Santa day.
    “We’ll start our Secret Santa gift exchanges next Tuesday. That’s one week from today,” Mr. G. told the class.
    Phew.
    “When you come to school, drop your gift in the big red bag outside the classroom door,” Mr. G. continued. “You should wrap your presents in plain brown paper. And make sure you write the name of the person you are giving the gift to on your package. The first two days, I’ll hand the gifts out for you. That way you Santas can stay secret until Thursday, when you reveal your identity to the person whose name is on your slip of paper.”
    “This is going to be so cool!” George exclaimed.
    “I can’t wait to go shopping,” Mandy Banks said. “I know exactly what to buy for my person.”
    “Me, too,” Emma Stavros agreed. “This is easy.”
    Katie wished she had it easy. Kadeem . That was a tough one. It was hard knowing what to buy for a boy. And it was even harder because this was the first year she and Kadeem had been in the same class. She didn’t know him nearly as well as some of the other kids.
    “Okay, gang, let’s get this day rockin’ and rollin’,” Mr. G. said. Katie knew she would have to think about her Secret Santa gifts later. Now she had to concentrate on her school work. “We’ll start with social studies,” he told the class. “Who can tell me about some of the animals that actually live at the Arctic Circle?”
    George Brennan raised his