Perfect Snow

Reviewed: December 13, 2009
By: Barbara Reid
Publisher: North Winds Press (Scholastic)
$19.99, $19.99

Barbara Reid is best known for her Plasticine illustrations in a succession of award winning children’s picture books. Among others, she’s won a Governor General’s Award for her work.

Foe this book - a joyous celebration of Canadian winters - she’s supplemented her usual beautiful work with ink-wash drawings that probably show a lot of her planning process as well as bridging the narrative gaps between the the larger colour illustrations.

It’s the first big snow of the year and the kids are completely caught up in the possibilites it presents. Scott and Jim are so excited that they don’t even mind that there wasn’t enough of the white stuff to cause a snow day cancellation. They can hardly keep their minds on the dull routine of their first and fourth grade classrooms.

Recess and lunch time produce a veritable blizzard of snow people and forts and a collaborative effort that creates a snowman snowfort of massive proportions.

“The whole school smelled like wet boots.”

And when it rains in the night, as it sometimes does in most of Canada outside of the North, end everything gets washed away, the kids don’t even care, because they know it means they can do it all over again the next time it snows.

Print Preview