Review by New York Times Review
"SNOW," WRITES THE British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, who creates ephemeral sculpture from snowballs and ice, "provokes responses that reach right back to childhood." For all but the most jaded, a coating of the white stuff is enough to make our familiar world look tantalizingly new and strange again, much as children experience it 24/7. No wonder classic picture-book artists like Ezra Jack Keats ("The Snowy Day") and William Steig ("Brave Irene") found inspiration in wintry weather, as do more than a few writers and illustrators for children working today. "First Snow," the Korean illustrator Bomi Park's debut picture book, is an assured and enchanting fantasy that reveals fresh secrets with each page turn. The cozy cover image of a wide-eyed toddler playing outdoors in the snow hardly hints at the dreamlike adventure to follow, in which the little girl rolls an everlarger snowball through village streets, past farm fields, and finally deep into the forest. There the narrative - carried forward in a few words and Park's meticulously observed, soft-focus illustrations - takes first one unexpected and altogether magical turn, then another, and another. What appears at the start to be a quiet little story proves in the end to be just the opposite: an inviting springboard to make-believe. While for Park a snowy landscape is a winter wonderland not to be missed, "Before Morning" makes the case that home is the place to be when the temperature plummets. Joyce Sidman voices a wish well known to schoolchildren: the dream scenario of a snowfall deep enough to keep everyone housebound. A keenly perceptive poet, Sidman shows that words and snow both have the power to transform our view of things: "Let the air turn to feathers, / the earth turn to sugar, / and all that is heavy/turn light." In an author's note, she explains that her 66-word lyric is an "invocation," a kind of secular prayer or spell that "invites something to happen." It was up to the illustrator Beth Krommes, the winner of the 2009 Caldecott Medal for "The House in the Night," to decide just what that "something" should be. Krommes is a master of scratchboard art, an exacting line technique that entails cutting into the black over-layer of a prepared surface to the white layer below to create a shimmering black-on-white image to which other colors can then be added. The visual back story Krommes has imagined for "Before Morning" takes us inside the comfortably cluttered home of a close-knit family. The mom we see there is a commercial airline pilot who is getting ready for work. Her young daughter, we realize, wishes that her mother would instead stay home with her. Love of family, Krommes suggests, may be one good reason to wish for a blizzard. The kinetic line-work of her rigorously stylized illustrations has almost the impact of a second back story, ft implies that the family vignette we've glimpsed is a small but integral part of a much larger narrative in which people, trees, cities, blizzards and the world at large are all entwined in one continuous living web. The elfin Antarctic dwellers of "Little Penguins" are a lot like preschoolers you may know: They savor the excitement of a good outdoor winter frolic, then, having had their fill of the cold, delight equally in the warmth and safety of home, which in their case is a nicely furnished igloo. Cynthia Rylant, winner of the 1993 Newbery Medal for "Missing May," is an exceptionally versatile writer who, here donning her best poker face, has mapped the high points of the penguins' eventful day in a few, fun-to-read-aloud words. Christian Robinson's lighthearted illustrations overlay childlike cut-paper characters on softly tinted backgrounds that burst into bright primary colors when the little birds finally scurry indoors to warm their webbed feet. Winter weather can of course also turn treacherous. A woolly mammoth with a biblical name is the beating heart of "Samson in the Snow," Philip C. Stead's exquisitely poised and tender fable about friendship in extreme circumstances. Built to withstand the fiercest blizzard, longhaired Samson is a gentle giant in the Ferdinand/ Horton mold who, for all his impressive physical heft and strength, feels a sharp need for companionship. The options in his neck of the tundra are apparently quite limited, however, and before long we see him befriending a little red bird and a mouse. When a storm hits, true-blue Samson not only worries about the fate of these vulnerable creatures, but also goes to great lengths to safeguard them. Like some sort of ice age Aesop, he concludes, "ft is better to walk than to worry." Together with his wife, Erin E. Stead (with whom he collaborated on the 2011 Caldecott Medal book "A Sick Day for Amos McGee"), Stead has been in the forefront of illustrators to respond to the preponderance of pixilated images by reembracing the handmade look and feel of picture books. He draws Samson here in a vigorous gestural style while rendering the landscapes through which the big guy lumbers in mood-mirroring expanses of richly hued and textured pastels. He adds an occasional rough-hewed cardboard print (something like a potato print) of a snowflake as a homey, but perfectly placed, decorative element. No creature - or artisanal flake - is too small to care about. Stead leaves the reader with much to ponder, not least if you consider that his unflappable mammoth's real-world counterparts went extinct millenniums ago and that the Old Testament superhero whose name he bears was betrayed by the woman he loved. Are readers to wonder whether earthly friendship is just as transitory? Stead and Samson are rather alike in their determination to leave as little to chance as possible, and in their view that good fellowship - like good bookmaking - is an art to be tended down to the last detail. A better gloss of Stead's fable might be : What's a little blizzard between friends? Let it snow. LEONARD S. MARCUS'S books include "Golden Legacy," "Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon" and, most recently, "Comics Confidential."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The team that produced Swirl by Swirl (2011) offers another story both intimate and glorious. A young girl hides her mother's pilot cap, knowing that it will soon be time for Mom to fly away again. Indeed, as the child sleeps, the mother heads to the airport. But what's this? Around the brownstone's windows, snowflakes are drifting. Soon the sky is white, and by the time Mom reaches the airport, enough snow has fallen to cancel the flight. She flags down a tow truck that drops her at home, resulting in unexpected time with family to make it slow with sleds and hot chocolate. It is rare in picture books to find words and art so perfectly matched, though perhaps not surprising given the talents of Caldecott winner Krommes (The House in the Night, 2008) and Newbery Honor Book author Sidman (Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night, 2010). Each phrase in Sidman's spare text evokes the heart and the senses (let the earth turn to sugar), while Krommes' scratchboard art is so intricately rendered, so full of story, that each page could be investigated dozens of times. At book's end, Sidman explains the text as an invocation, inviting readers to throw their own words and wishes into the air. Who could resist?--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a book-length poem, Newbery Honor recipient Sidman (Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night) expresses a heartfelt wish for a blizzard so big that it brings everything to a halt; Caldecott Medalist Krommes (The House in the Night) imagines a child for whom a snow day matters more than most. The child's mother is an airline pilot, and the first spreads show the girl and her father preparing to say good-bye to her. In this context, Sidman's words ("Let the sky fill with flurry and flight") take on a different meaning; the child clearly hopes that, just this once, her mother might stay. As the snow starts ("Let the air turn to feathers"), the mother sets off for the airport, but when she realizes no flights are leaving ("Let urgent plans founder" accompanies huddling groups of stranded airport travelers), she turns back. Krommes's sturdy, rounded figures and quiltlike compositions convey the family's joy as the mother returns. The story's parallel but separate threads-the innocent images of the poem, the cheery reassurance of the illustrations, and the tension of the family's wait-give this collaboration significant emotional depth. Ages 4-7. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-At dusk, a woman, child, and dog hurry out of the park and pass by a bakery, though the wool-capped girl clearly wants to stop. They enter their apartment, where Dad has dinner ready, and everyone looks happy except the girl, who's staring dolefully at a cap that sits atop a small suitcase. In the next illustration, as the windows reflect the night, a book about Amelia Earhart lies open on the couch as the mother, in her airline pilot's uniform, seems to coax her child into returning the cap she's hiding behind her back. Turn the page, and beyond the entry hall filled with winter clothes, skates, and sled, the mother is folding and packing clothes into her overnight bag. Only then do the words begin: "In the deep woolen dark,/as we slumber unknowing,/let the sky fill with flurry and flight." This haunting invocation summons geese, snowflakes, and a heavy whiteness that refracts the golden city lights. Krommes shows viewers the city from the rooftops, from the back of goose wings, and from the statues in the park. When the poem says, "Let urgent plans founder," we see the airport waiting room, where the mother gazes out at snowplows under the planes as a sign announces flight cancellations. Any child might be wishing for snow to "change the world before morning," to "make it slow and delightful and white," but here, as a stunning series of scratchboard (similar to woodcut) and watercolor pictures reveal, the petitioner is a girl who longs to have both her parents home with her to sled down a steep white slope and to visit that bakery at last. VERDICT This simply perfect book is a must-have piece of portable poetry and art for all collections.-Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY © Copyright 2016. 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
Sidman and Krommes (Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, rev. 9/06; Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature, rev. 9/11) reunite for this picture-book evocation of a child's hopes. Wordless front-matter illustrations rendered in Krommes's signature scratchboard technique depict a mother and child walking their dog at the end of a bleak winter's day. After arriving home, the child frowns upon seeing a brimmed blue hat with gold embellishments. On the facing page, the child tries to hide it from the mother. Toy planes and a book about Amelia Earhart help connect the dots: it is a pilot's hat; the mother is a pilot; and the child doesn't want her to leave. Backstory established, Sidman's poetic text begins ("In the deep woolen dark, as we slumber unknowing") as Mom, dressed in full uniform, departs while her family sleeps. The ensuing incantation is for snow to come ("Let the air turn to feathers, the earth turn to sugar"), and, sure enough, a blizzard grounds planes and sends Mom home (with help from a friendly snowplow driver). When the family heads outside to play the next morning, the art brightens significantly, with large, open patches of white that interrupt the steady crosshatching. This is no adult-dreaded snowpocalyspe; it's a welcomed snow day, "slow and delightfuland white." Throughout, Krommes's illustrations do the narrative work, and a series of wordless spreads at book's end provides a sweet balance to the front matter's opening scenes, slowly easing the reader out of this mesmerizing book. megan dowd lambert (c) Copyright 2016. 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
A child yearns for the snow day that will keep her mother, an airplane pilot, home.Krommes' inimitable scratchboard illustrations play with perspective and point of view as they flesh out Sidmans short poem, written in the form of an invocation. Washed with orange, tan, and icy blue, they open and close with landscapes reminiscent of Virginia Lee Burtons work. Moving in on the scene, readers see street traffic and park pigeons. Fallen leaves indicate the season. Mother, child, and dog leave the park, passing a bakery. Three wordless spreads set up the story; on the fourth, the poem begins. Its set with just a few words on the double-page images; some spreads need no words. The pacing is perfect. Careful readers will relish the details and concoct back stories of their own. Overnight, the pilot tiptoes away, just as snowflakes begin to fall. Gradually, park, roads, and cars are covered with snow. Finally she gets to the airport. No planes will fly. Instead, mother returns to a snow-covered world, where all three can breakfast together, toboggan in the park, and celebrate with hot chocolate and cupcakes. A snow day dream! The straight-haired mother and child are nearly genderless, and they are washed with the same peach color as the leaves. On the final endpapers, elaborate blue-tinged crystals float over the quiet snow-covered town. Like a snow day, a special treat with broad appeal. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
