Snowmen and Children

Children love snow. They love to jump and play and create with snow.  I remember as a child making a snow igloo once.  Was I crazy?  No, just having child-like adventure.  Children look at the world differently and observe ordinary things in an unordinary way.   Snowmen at Night is a story like that.  It begins with a child saying, What do snowmen do at night?

When I first read this book by Caralyn Buehner, I scoped out the book jacket.  Authors will leave clues to where their ideas come from.  (I at least feel like I know the author a little better if I read the information about him or her.)  I was not disappointed with this one.  Caralyn said that her son looked out at the snowman he had built the day before and wondered what happened to him, now droopy and lopsided.  The picture of that original snowman was there on the book jacket too.  How cute and creative – a question a child asks spurring an idea for a book.

Snowmen At Night begins with a boy wondering what happened to his snowman.  His active imagination comes to life as you turn the page and see the snowmen becoming personified.  Mark Buehner uses his illustrations to enhance the playfulness of the snowmen.

 

 

Savorings for reading and in writing for Snowmen at Night:

• Perspective – a child’ imagination tells the story in first person
• Poetic Prose
• Colon – used in a couple of places in the book; for Snowmen at Christmas, a semi-colon is used.
• A fun read!