Principal's Night Before Christmas

Though everybody else had settled down for a long winter's nap, poor Principal Swell has his hands full. With state-mandated paperwork, computers to fix, bus routes to unknot, not to mention discipline and field trips and all the concerned parents, it seems he'll never get back home to his own family! Suddenly the school bell rings, and there stands a lively professor with a promise to fix, complete, or manage it all, since he's already sent the teachers home from the mall. With a few final words of encouragement, he takes off in his school bus: "Merry Christmas to principals-holiday cheer! For they make Santa proud every day of the year!"Steven L. Layne is a winner of the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award and was a member of USA Today's 2001 All-USA Teacher Team. He serves as director of the Master of Education in Literacy program at Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, and is a respected literacy consultant and motivational keynote speaker. He is the author of several other award-winning books with Pelican, including the International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Children's Choices selections The Teachers' Night Before Christmas and My Brother Dan's Delicious and Love the Baby, Share with Brother, Verses for Dad's Heart, Verses for Mom's Heart, This Side of Paradise, Paradise Lost, and Mergers. Widely acclaimed as the South's leading illustrator of juvenile books, James Rice produced sixty titles, with more than two million copies in print. Rice was born on a farm in Coleman County, Texas, in 1934. He graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Texas, a master of fine arts degree from Stephen F. Austin University, and a master of arts degree in education from Howard Payne College. He taught art and music and was a favorite speaker at schools, nursing homes, and community centers across the country. Rice moved to Hico, Texas, in 1980, where he died in 2004.Layne, Steven is the author of 'Principal's Night Before Christmas', published 2004 under ISBN 9781589802520 and ISBN 1589802527.