It's Christmas Eve, and Santa's reindeer are sick with the chicken pox. They can't pull his sleigh, so Santa needs some serious help. Will the unicorns save Christmas despite coming down with a case of hiccups? Or will Christmas have to be canceled?

When Lenny Volpe, former quarterback of the worst professional football team in the nation, leaves his family and disappears, the Chicago Horribles win their first game in a long time. Fans are thrilled. The world seems to go back to normal. Except for the Volpe kids. Winston throws himself into playing the tuba, and Louise starts secret experiments to find a cure for brain injuries, and they're each fine, just fine, coping in their own way. That is, until the investigation of some eccentric teacher behavior and the discovery of a real live bear paraded as the Horribles' new mascot make it clear that things are very much Not Fine. The siblings may just need each other, after all.

Fovea Munson is nobody's Igor. True, her parents own a cadaver lab where they perform surgeries on dead bodies, and yes, that makes her gross by association, at least according to everyone in school. And sure, Fovea's stuck working at the lab now that her summer plans have fallen through. But she is by no means just Dr. Frankenstein's assistant] That is, until three disembodied heads in the lab start talking. To her. Out loud. What seems like a nightmare, or bizarre hallucination, is not. Fovea is somebody's Igor, all right. Three somebodies, actually. And they need a favour.