We usually think snowmen are built by children. The cover illustration implies this group of children are building and dressing a huge snowman in their garden, but the opening lines of this book are curious. The snowman is new but there is no mention of children building him. He seems to have just arrived somehow. The snowman observes his world using all his senses – the sight of the garden, the sounds of the children and animals and the feeling of the wind and dew. The weather warms up, the days grow longer and now there are fresh smells of blossom and pine. Over each page the snowman grows smaller until all that is left is a single white flower which acts a memory of the snowman himself. It is the children who know that this flower is a gift from the snowman. The snowman has changed, transformed, he is not gone. His wish to be remembered is fulfilled.
The language used in this book is lyrical and evocative. The author uses alliteration and similes to describe the snowman’s view of his world. We ‘hear’ the thoughts of the snowman and his repeated refrain of ‘how beautiful’ adds an emotional layer to the story.
The seasonal settings for this book are shown in the front and back endpapers where we see ice covered white leaves on an ice-blue background at one end and vibrant red and orange flowers at the back. This is a story about the passage of time and about change and transformation. It has a very European feel. There is a tiny reference to sleigh bells – a sound associated with a winter Christmas in the Northern hemisphere. The illustrations were created with Adobe Photoshop and hand-painted and computer-generated watercolour layers of collage. A perfect comparison text would be the wordless book The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.
Picture Books for Older Readers
