Hello!

Are you ready to hear a story?

Excellent! This time we have a story about a girl who writes a letter to Santa about all the things she would like.

And is read by our friend Kendall. I hope you enjoy it. And happy Christmas!

Dear Santa, by Hannah Erickson.

It was October not even Halloween yet when Josie wrote her first letter to Santa.

Dear Santa, she wrote.

For Christmas, what I would like best is to lose a tooth. All of the kids in my class have lost a tooth except for me. It is taking forever.

It was true. All of the children in room seven at Thorntz Hill Elementary had lost a tooth except for Josie. Some of them had even lost five or six teeth.

When Josie thought about it, she felt like a heavy water bottle inside. Why did she have to be the last one to do everything?

Josie looked at her letter to Santa. It was a good start, but she had a few other requests too. Holding her rainbow colored pencil tightly, she wrote.

Also, I would like fairy shoes, duct tape for building fairy houses, a yellow unicorn's stuffy, a real unicorn, or a horse, and some candy.

I'm not picky about the kind of candy I'll take whatever you have.

At the end of the list, she added, please, in big letters, her parents would not be happy if she forgot that.

Hmm, anything else? Josie thought for a minute about last Christmas. It had been okay, but not great. She'd gotten everything she wanted, and Santa had filled her stocking up.

But her great grandmother had been very sick, and her mom had seemed so busy, and her dad had had to work. Maybe this year could be better.

Most of all, Josie wrote, I want a good Christmas. Love, Josie. She drew a slightly lopsided, but still lovely heart at the bottom of the page. Inside the heart, she used a sparkly red pen to draw a present with a bow on top, and then squeezed in a unicorn on the side.

When she was finished, she held up the page and looked at it.

Perfect. She said quietly to herself. Then she thought of something else.

P.S. She wrote, since it's not Christmas time yet, maybe you have time to write me back?

Carefully, Josie folded the paper into a rectangle, and then went in search of an envelope.

After rifling through the office closet for about 20 minutes, she finally found a red envelope, probably left over from last year's Christmas cards.

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