Terrible storm

K-Gr 3-From their creaky front-porch rocking chairs, Walt (a social butterfly) and Fred (his polar opposite) recall New England's Great Blizzard of 1888, when they were young men. "Eh-yah, didn't think it would amount to much," muses Fred. But it did, and caught both of them unhappily by surprise: shy Fred found himself stuck in a lively, crowded tavern in town, while Walt was forced to take cover alone in his barn. When the snow eventually stopped, and they could finally dig themselves out, the two friends passed each other on the road-one desperate to get out of the bustling pub, the other equally desperate to get in. Schindler's ink-and-watercolor art captures the rolling, leafless, brown-and-gray landscape of Massachusetts in March, and then buries it in dense white snow. The art is infused with period details, from delivering milk in a horse-drawn cart to dinners lit by candlelight. Hurst's call-and-response narrative approach, consisting solely of the old men's terse dialogue, works well with the page layout and captures the rhythms of a story told, back and forth, many times over. A first choice for large collections, and a good supplemental purchase for all others.-Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The narrator's grandfathers experience the Massachusetts blizzard of 1888 quite differently as young men. Gregarious Walt was stranded alone in a barn; shy Fred in a crowded inn. Both assert that his was the ""worst possible place,"" but Schindler's lively pen-and-ink illustrations tell a different story. The book's bifurcated telling demands careful attention, but once the pattern is established it's very funny. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.