Rating: 4 stars
Since it might snow tonight here in the Northern Virginia area (!!), I thought I'd let you know about a cute book by Robert Neubecker about two siblings who have very different views on the wonderful-ness of snow. I am a huge fan of Neubecker's huge, simple, great WOW! books, and I like this new one a lot.
Brother loves winter, Sister hates it. They argue in color--no words are wasted on "he says" and "she says," which works well. Together, the siblings' words form a rhyme:
Winter is for fat snowflakes,
swirling as they blow,
glittering like diamond dust!
Winter is for snow.
Winter! I say No.
The illustrations make me pause. They are fitting, but I cringe at the thought of my kids choosing Sister's act rather than Brother's attitude. In one picture she's on her i-something. In another, she is glued to the television.
Kiefer is up too early (5:29 AM!) so he gets to blog with me. |
And wouldn't you know it?
Winter is for all these things?
Is it really so?
Winter might not be so bad.
Winter is for SNOW!
It's a cute book, a nice reminder to get outside and enjoy Winter rather than complain about it (my husband can assure you that I need a cattle prod every now and then to do this as I was made for flip-flops more than snow boots).
BUT. There's a small but to this book.
When I first read it, I had Neubecker's Wow! books in mind, where the two characters are a father and his daughter. So I thought that the two characters in this book were the same: a father and daughter. It made sense to me (though when I read through it again I realize it's a pretty short father!) because a big brother would probably NOT put up with all that pouting about winter. Plus I really loved that the father was pulling his daughter out of the house and playing WITH her--I love any book that has that in it. Maybe in Neubecker's next book...
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