Review by New York Times Review
WRITING a children's book about snow is no small order, given that one of the most memorable children's books of all time, "The Snowy Day," by Ezra Jack Keats, so definitively owns the subject. The book's freshness is all the more startling given that it celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. But there will always be new takes on the subject, whether decidedly nostalgic ones, as in two new books, "Cold Snap" and "Twelve Kinds of Ice," or contemporary ones, as "The Snowy Day" was in its time and "A Perfect Day" is now. Could there be any pleasure more timeless than a book that sparkles? It's always nice when the prose shines, but "Cold Snap," written by Eileen Spinelli and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman, is going for a more literal dazzle: its snow-scene cover glints with tiny flecks of ice-blue glitter, providing the kind of visual that will entrance readers before they have heard so much as a single word of text. To its credit, the story, too, reflects a deep understanding of what is most likely to tickle the fancy of children. As a cold snap in the village of Toby Mills gets worse, the icicle on the nose of a local statue gets longer; the mayor is spied at his office getting cozy in pink bunny slippers; and Pastor Pickthorn's dog, Mugs, begs "for his fuzzy red coat - the one he had balked at wearing before." In the age of global warming, a cold snap seems to serve as the perfect premise for a tale imbued with deep nostalgia. Heavy on Americana, "Cold Snap" evokes fabled small-town values, the kind inevitably described as bygone but more accurately called idealized. It is a place where the Sullivan Sisters knit mittens the size of flap-jackets for all the children in town, and locals accept the mayor's invitation to a "winter surprise" because, as a certain Mrs. Moffat says, "It's our civic duty." Priceman, who is perhaps best known for the lively illustrations of "Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin," brings the same antic energy to the chilly but cheery people of Toby Mills, and Spinelli alternates gags with tender moments. A woman bakes her husband's birthday cake elsewhere rather than disturb a family of mice seeking heat in her oven; and readers may forever see the moon on icy nights as Spinelli describes it: "silver as sleet." If "Cold Snap" is the Sears Roebuck of snow stories, "A Perfect Day," by the designer and illustrator Carin Berger, is straight out of Etsy. Its tiny Penguin-like collage-based figures - Sasha and Max and Thea among them - are visions in twill and plaid and striped tights. Its snowy scenes are so tasteful that an icicle stand opened by young Charlotte looks like some outdoor pop-up shop that a contestant on Bravo might have designed (even the sign on the stand is subtle but snazzy). In this book for toddlers, or for older children with a good eye, the text is mostly a setup for the unusual and beautiful images, as Berger follows a day's progress from the first pristine scene of morning to the evening's moody landscape, imprinted with the hollows of snow angels and glowing with warm lamplight. "A Perfect Day," though spare in words, evokes the greatest hits of snowy days, from steaming cups of hot chocolate to snowball fights. Its images - stark trees and strangely shaped clouds - capture something more elusive, the eerie otherworld liness of a landscape transformed. Berger created the backgrounds of her collages using faded old receipts and other ephemera. Children may not even notice the ghostly scrawlings, but for adults they serve as a reminder of the contrast between the concerns of grown-ups (bills, balances, investments) and those of the Finns and Sophies who populate this snowy world. The nostalgia is even more explicit, and specific, in Ellen Bryan Obed's perfect snowflake of a book, "Twelve Kinds of Ice." Truth be told, it is unclear exactly what kind of child would find the book entrancing: sophisticated enough for good readers, it is sparsely, if deftly, illustrated and has no vampires or brand names or even a dramatic plot to suck someone in. But it is nonetheless an ingeniously crafted memoir of Obed's dreamy childhood in Maine, built around the 12 kinds of ice that served as successive signposts of the advancing season. It starts with the first ice that "came on the sheep pails in the barn - a skim of ice so thin that it broke when we touched it." And it takes readers through various delights as December turns to January and February. Even more powerful than Obed's evocations of the thrills of physical sport are her swift, indirect characterizations of her family, who worked hard to transform what was usually the vegetable garden into a skating rink, making them neighborhood stars. Obed's father not only let all the local children put on an ice show in his rink, piping John Philip Sousa through the house windows, but provided the entertainment, skating around with a lemon pie that ended up making contact with Grandpa's face. This is a book about a young woman's deep connection to nature and her family, but also the thrilling reward of pitching in together to create something magical. Barbara McClintock's engraving-like illustrations, all black and white, capture New England's austerity and beauty in winter, and the swirling lines of skaters in motion. Of course, anyone nostalgic for a decidedly modern children's book about snow need look no further than "The Snowy Day," with its friendly traffic light; chocka-block apartment buildings; and independent hero, Peter, a young boy of color. For as long as there is snow, such books remind us, the experience of its magical coldness - in literature as in the outdoors - will thrill children, wherever they are. Susan Dominus is a staff writer at The Times Magazine.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 11, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Everything about this small book is precise. Twenty short chapters introduce the different kinds of ice that take one family through the winter, while McClintock's pen-and-ink drawings, subtle yet celebratory, capture ice in all its incarnations. The first ice, you see, is a skim so thin it breaks when the children touch it. Second ice is like glass. But third ice doesn't break. The narrator and her sister hear it coming: We lay in our beds, listening to the cold cracking the maple limbs in the yard. Field ice arrives as a narrow strip. Then stream ice, when you can watch fish swim beneath the surface. Black ice is a little scarier, but it's good for skating. After the first snowfall, skating can be done at home on garden ice, made by packing the snow and turning on the hose. So it goes throughout the winter, as the family garden becomes a neighborhood hockey rink. When it's perfect, it's time for a skating party. Finally, the ice is gone. Lost mittens and pucks appear. But dream ice still exists and you can skate on it no matter what the season. Evocative and at the same time marvelously real, this is as much about expectation and the warmth to be found in family and friends as it is about cold ice. Children who don't live in a cold climate will wish they did, and everyone will find this a small gem.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Like a souvenir from a bygone era, this homage to rural winter celebrates the gradual freezing of barn buckets and fields, the happy heights of ice-skating season, and the inevitable spring thaw. Obed (Who Would Like a Christmas Tree?) crafts an autobiographical first-person narrative of a farm family and lists her dozen crystalline varieties in ascending order. "First Ice" glazes "the sheep pails in the barn"; a second heftier ice lifts "like panes of glass.... in our mittened hands"; another ice, thicker still, heralds after-school skating. Short-lived pleasures, like sinister see-through "black ice" on Maine's Great Pond, give way to homespun fun on a DIY rink built on the vegetable patch. McClintock (A Child's Garden of Verses) sets cozy mid-20th century scenes with her crosshatched pen-and-ink illustrations; children, bundled in woolly layers, imagine themselves Olympic figure skaters and twirl to the sound of "John Philip Sousa marches, Strauss waltzes, Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals." This quaint volume could have been written 60 years ago, alongside One Morning in Maine and The Little Island. Today's readers will marvel at the old-fashioned amusements, chronicled with folksy charm. Ages 6-9. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-How many kinds of ice are there during the winter? It starts with that faint crinkly sheen that breaks at a touch. Gradually, however, ice spreads over fields and ponds. It grows thicker as the cold seeps deep. Finally, it's time for the family to set the boundaries, stomp the snow, spray the water, and create the ice rink that will be their entertainment center for hockey and skating until the same progression that began the ice reverses, and the world warms again. While the ice goes from a thin sheet to a frozen stream, the house becomes a warming area, a locker room, and a sports center. All activities revolve around the ice. Obed's book (Houghton Harcourt, 2012) contains 20 very short chapters that skim beautifully over each type of ice and the activities that follow. The author evokes all the senses with carefully chosen spare text. Jessica Almasy reads the story in a youthful voice, drawing listeners in until they, too, are skimming smoothly across this annual magic of the winter season. An evocative, joyful celebration of winter.-Teresa Bateman, Brigadoon Elementary, Federal Way, WA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In this joyous set of prose poems we follow a family through a winter, from first ice to black ice (water shocked still by the cold before the snow) and from field ice to dream ice, enjoying, along the way, ice plucked from the top of a bucket (we had seen it coming in the close, round moon), a homemade hockey rink, a goofy dads ice capades, and the exhilaration of speed (our blades spit out silver). In Obeds lilting words and McClintocks energetic yet cozy line drawings, reminiscent of Erik Blegvad, we meet the Bryan family, the neighbors, and the college students who drop in to skate and roast marshmallows. This is a celebration of play, of winter, and of imagination (We looked beneath the ice and saw what we could not see in summer -- boulders and cracks between boulders, black shadows and sunken tree branches. And we saw what was not there -- the sullen backs and open jaws of hibernating monsters rising up from the lake bottom) in an icy collection whose overarching quality is warmth. sarah ellis (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Winter on a Maine farm offers the joys of ice in all its forms. Icy childhood memories glisten in this magical series of nostalgic vignettes. From the first skim on a pail to the soft, splotchy rink surface at the end of the season, Obed recalls the delights of what others might have found a dreary season. The best thing about ice is skating: in fields, on a creek or frozen lake and, especially, on the garden rink. In a series of short scenes presented chronologically, the author describes each ice stage in vivid detail, adding suspense with a surprising midwinter thaw and peaking with an ice show. Her language shimmers and sparkles; it reads like poetry. Readers will have no trouble visualizing the mirror of black ice on a lake where their "blades spit out silver," or the "long black snake" of a garden hose used to spray the water for their homemade rink. McClintock's numerous line drawings add to the delight. They show children testing the ice in a pail, a father waltzing with a broom, joyous children gliding down a hill in a neighbor's frozen field. One double-page spread shows the narrator and her sister figure skating at night, imagining an admiring crowd. The perfect ice--and skating--of dreams concludes her catalog. Irresistible. (Memoir. 6-9)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
