Little Siv is supposed to sleep over at Cerisia's place, but the later it gets the stranger things start to appear in her new friend's odd home.
It’s the beginning of December in northern Sweden. It’s snowing heavily. When SIV,
7, is catching snowflakes on her tongue, she notices something new. A pink coat
amongst all the practical dark overalls.
Siv is fascinated by the appearance of her new classmate, CERISIA. Cerisia is dressed
differently and has opinions. For instance, she wants to be a Christmas tree in the
Christmas Lucia procession at school, instead of being Lucia in a white gown like all
the other girls.
Siv is more concerned with something else. She has not mastered reading yet and
can’t remember her lines for the procession. When Cerisia asks Siv to sleep over at
her place, Siv is very happy. Perhaps Cerisia wants to be her friend. Siv doesn’t have
a best friend.
The sleepover turns out differently than expected. The flat has too many doors and
smells odd. The dog Pållan is very big and has a strange bump on its head. The
Christmas tree has no electric candles and CERISIA’S GRANDMOTHER is so old that she
has shrunk and can take her teeth out. There are so many books that Siv gets a bit
dizzy. Cerisia’s big brother ELME is enormous and plays too loud music. The food is
peculiar. Cerisia wants most of the ice cream and gingerbread cookies, just because
she and Siv are at her home. The final blow is when Cerisia wants to play zombies
before going to sleep.
When Siv wakes up in the middle of the night, she decides she wants to go home
immediately. Where is the note with her father’s telephone number? Oh, that’s
right, Cerisia took it. But where is Cerisia? She is not in the room. Siv ventures into
the rather dark and silent flat to find Cerisia.
Oddly enough, the flat has changed. Doors have become really small or really
large, wallpapers look different and move. The keys in the wallpaper pattern have
disappeared! Or, have they been transformed into real keys? That can open doors?
Siv starts opening doors and has one adventure after the other. The first is helping
Grandmother, who is even smaller now, fall asleep. Then she meets a real reindeer,
and after that THUMB and PINKIE, two very talkative badgers in red wellington
boots with a passion for silly rhymes and gingerbread cookies. They have a mad
detective’s tea party trying to figure out where Cerisia could have gone.
Finally, Siv finds Cerisia in the bathroom and they actually have fun together telling
silly jokes, before falling asleep under the kitchen sink.
The day after, when walking home in the snow, Siv tells her father that it wasn’t
such fun to sleep over, but interesting. Strangely enough, she has learned to read.
And she points out that every single snow flake is different, but equally beautiful.
In the Christmas procession at school a few days later, Siv is not a Lucia, but a
reindeer.