Clean, cold, white snow! Snow for sledding. Snow for catching on your tongue. Snow for making a SNOWMAN! Is there anything as wonderful as SNOW? Is there any better friend than a SNOWMAN? Snow isn't forever, though. The wind shifts, the weather warms and snow melts into spring. The Snowman has become something else--the fog, the rain. But, how can this boy forget his good friend? He doesn't...and he doesn't have to.
Bestselling author, Alison McGhee reminds us all that nothing that has been cared for can ever disappear for good, for, "What you love will always be with you." And, this tender story about the power of friendship will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.
"McGhee takes up an ethereal subject: longing for absent loved ones. A boy builds--and happily befriends--a snowman, which later melts in a spring thaw. "Where did you go?" the boy wonders. "Look," writes McGhee (Someday), as the seasons shift and the boy pours a bucket of water into a pond. "He is in the falling water, and the rain upon the ocean." Rosenthal's (I Must Have Bobo!) boxy houses and rural scenes speak of simpler times, and the soft, sepia outlines of his pencil drawings look like old lithographs. Visual hints of the snowman's lingering presence--ripples in the pond echo his charcoal facial features--underscore McGhee's message. (And just in case readers miss it, it's also spelled out in a refrain, "What you love will always be with you.") The success of the book is in the gentle rhythm created by McGhee's telegraphic text and Rosenthal's spot illustrations, and in its evocation of the long waits of childhood, so difficult for the young to endure. All ages."-- Publishers Weekly, September 5, 2011
Alison McGhee is the New York Times bestselling author of Someday, as well as Dear Sister, What I Leave Behind, Pablo and Birdy, Where We Are, Maybe a Fox with Kathi Appelt, Firefly Hollow, Little Boy, So Many Days, Star Bright, A Very Brave Witch, Dear Brother, and the Bink and Gollie books. Her other children's books include All Rivers Flow to the Sea, Countdown to Kindergarten, and Snap!. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Laguna Beach, California. You can visit her at AlisonMcGhee.com.
Marc Rosenthal is the New York Times bestselling illustrator of many books for children, including the Small Walt collection by Elizabeth Verdick, All You Need Is Love by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, I Must Have Bobo! by Eileen Rosenthal, We Love Fishing! and Mabel Wants a Friend by Ariel Bernstein, and Archie and the Pirates, which he wrote. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Learn more at Marc-Rosenthal.com.
Target Age: 4-8
Antheneum Books for Young Readers
Pub Date: October 04, 2011
0.4" H x 9.78" L x 8.39" W
40 pages
hardcover