GIZMO TO THE RESCUE?

It was looking more and more like there would be no presents for kids this Christmas. Almost all of the toys and gifts had been made, and taken the the Wrapping Room, and were going to be wrapped starting this week. But when Holly Elf went in Monday morning, the presents were gone!

But Bernard Elf was not ready to give up yet. "I didn't get to be Santa's Number One Elf by letting a little problem like this get in the way of Christmas!" he said as he strode stridently through the North Pole.

"Really? All the presents disappearing is a little problem?" asked Holly as she strove to stride as stridently as Bernard. "So what do you consider a big problem?"

"Haven't met one yet," said Bernard as he walked into Gizmo Elf's workshop. Gizmo was Santa's Chief Inventing Elf. Gizmo had what looked like a hair dryer and was using it on Ali Elf's hair.

"That's amazing, Gizmo!" said Holly. "You turned Ali's hair blonde with that hair dryer!"

"Blonde?" said Ali. "It was supposed to be pink!"

"Still got a few bugs to work out," said Gizmo.

"That will have to wait," said Bernard. "We seem to have lost all of the Christmas presents," Bernard told the Inventing Elf. "Can you make some more?"

"Oh, dear," said Gizmo. "That would be a lot of work for the Appendapulator. I made it to make Christmas presents in a hurry, but since we had made them all so early, I was letting Waldo use it. I don't know if I can get it changed back into a toymaking machine fast enough."

"What was Waldo doing with the Appendapulator?" asked Bernard.

"He and Teema Elf came in this weekend with armloads of wrapping paper and magic tape--you know the kind that's nearly invisible? It always takes me so long to find the edge of the paper to unwrap my presents..."

"What was Waldo doing?" asked Bernard.

"He wanted to see if he could get the tape and wrapping paper combined so that we could have paper that wrapped itself," said Gizmo.

"Hmmm...I think I have a hunch about what happened to the presents!" said Bernard. Follow me...back to the Wrapping Room!"

What will Bernard find there? Keep reading The North Pole Times to find out!