<i Twas the night before Christmas and all through the town All the students and teachers had settled right down.< Though everybody else has settled down for a long winteris 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 heill 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 heis 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!< About the Author Steven L. Layne is a faculty member in the Department of Education at Judson College in Elgin, Illinois, where he teaches courses in literature and pedagogy. He also serves as a national literacy consultant, featured author, and keynote speaker at conferences and workshops throughout the United States and Canada. He is the author of five picture books published by Pelican, including the International Reading Association/Childrenis Choices selection My Brother Danis Delicious ($15.95), as well as Thomasis Sheep and the Great Geography Test ($15.95), and Thomasis Sheep and the Spectacular Science Project ($15.95). His novel This Side of Paradise ($15.99) won the 2001 Hal Clement Award for Young Adult Science Fiction. His collection of poems in tribute to fathers, Verses for Dadis Heart ($16.95), published in May 2004, is in a second printing. He lives with his wife and three children in Saint Charles, Illinois. About the Illustrator Widely acclaimed as the Southis leading illustrator of juvenile books, James Rice illustrated and/or wrote over sixty books, including all eighteen of the books in The Night Before Christmas Series . There are almost two million copies of his books in print. Mr. Rice taught art at the grammar-school, high-school, and university levels and enjoyed talking to thousands of schoolchildren across the country about writing and art over the course of his thirty-year career.