About the Holiday

There’s nothing better than spending the chilly days of winter snuggled up with new books. Kids love cuddling up and sharing laughs, poignant moments, fascinating facts, and the changes seasons bring through books. If you’re looking for a way to celebrate Read A New Book Month, check out the new titles at your favorite bookstore and buy one, two, or a whole stockingful to wrap up for the holidays. After all, a looong winter’s ahead!

Snow Falls

Written by Kate Gardner | Illustrated by Brandon James Scott

 

Through three seasons of the year when rain falls outside our windows, we keep on working, playing, watching TV, or using our computers or phones. But add colder temperatures and those raindrops turn to snowflakes that have us up and at the windows marveling at their beauty. Little ones become especially wide-eyed and excited to get outside as “snow softens” sturdy tree branches, angled rooftops, flat ground, and even the sounds in the air.

The white-blanketed earth becomes an adventurer’s paradise as “snow tracks,” allowing wanderers to retrace their footsteps and find their way home. Of course, kids with sleds know that “snow slides,” turning every hill into a challenge that beckons and sometimes—at the bottom—becomes topsy-turvy fun where, maybe, “snow hides” a dislodged mitten, hat, or scarf.

There are days where “snow snows… and snows… and snows.” Then there’s enough white, fluffy, perfectly sticky fluff to make snowmen where “snow smiles” or soft balls so “snow flies.” But then there come the days where the sun is warm and the snow slowly slips away, revealing the world again until the next snowy day.

As wonder-filled and enticing as the first snow of the season, Kate Gardner’s lyrical ode to kids’ favorite winter playmate highlights the ways snow transforms the world, from the way it looks to the activities it allows even to the cozy moments it creates inside. Garner’s two-word sentences drift from page to page on alliteration, rhymes, consonance, and assonance as smoothly as a sled on a hill. Children will love reading along and talking about their own memories of snowy day fun.

Brandon James Scott’s soft, textured scenes, “painted digitally in the evenings of a snowy Canadian winter,” begin—as most snows do for kids—seen from just above the windowsill as the first flakes fall. Looking into a cozy house, readers see a little girl peeking out. On hooks hang a striped scarf, knitted hat, and dog sweater that will feature in the pages to come. As the little girl runs out into the winter wonderland, the white world is punctuated with a tiny red bird that kids will love searching for from page to page. 

Various perspectives give children different views of the snow-covered neighborhood. Scott also captures a glorious gold, pink, and violet sunset as well as the way snow swirls into the air, buffeted by icy gusts. When the girl lands head first into the snow at the bottom of the sledding hill, Scott begins a storyline for the scarf that kids will eagerly follow. Hot chocolate and cookies, a forest of snowmen, snowball fights, and the mercurial melting that forms islands, paths, and monster footprints are all chronicled too in Scott’s lovely pages, which are wrapped in a sparkling jacket that gives way to the girl and her dog making snow angels underneath.

A book adults and children will want to share again and again throughout the winter and when hot weather calls for relief, Snow Falls would make a wonderful gift and is highly recommended for home, school, and public library collections.

Ages 3 – 7

Tundra Books, 2020 | ISBN 978-1101919217

To learn more about Brandon James Scott, his books, and his art, visit his website.

Read a New Book Month Activity

Snowy Day Mindfulness Jar

 

You can capture the beauty of a glittering snowfall in this easy craft—that also makes a special gift for a friend!

Supplies

• Small to medium mason jar or other decorative jar with a tight lid
• White glitter glue,
• Light blue glitter glue,
• Fine white and/or blue glitter
• Large white and/or blue glitter
• Warm water

Directions

1.For every 1/2 cup of warm water add:

• 1 1/2 teaspoons white glitter glue
• 1/2 teaspoon blue glitter glue
• 2 teaspoons fine glitter glue
• 1/2 teaspoon large glitter

2. Close lid tightly

3. Shake

As glue dissolves, the liquid will become clearer and the glitter will remain suspended in it

You can find Snow Falls at these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million

To support your local independent bookstore, order from

Bookshop | IndieBound

Picture Book Review