TEN WAYS TO HEAR SNOW

On her way to her grandmother’s, Lina counts the ways she hears snow.

Lina is excited to tell Sitti about the snowstorm and is looking forward to making warak enab with her. Sitti is losing her eyesight, and Lina enjoys cooking with Sitti in her room at the assisted living facility. Bundled up and walking in the snow, Lina thinks about how her grandma must feel, listening to how the world sounds. “Scraaape, scrip, scraaape, scrip,” is the sound of Mrs. Watson’s shovel; “Snyak, snyek, snyuk,” tread Lina’s boots. She sees people brushing off their cars and her friends Rachid and Mariam building a snowman. At Sitti’s, her grandmother instructs Lina how to stuff the grape leaves with the rice and lamb mixture and to roll them up, vignettes showing the different steps. They also have fun afterward, comparing them to “little grape leaf cocoons” and pretending they are mustaches. Using soft, clear, and calming colors, Pak portrays the neighborhood in the aftermath of the snowstorm, visually interpreting the variety of noises and activities the community partakes in. His quiet compositions complement Camper’s words, which beautifully evoke the experience: “The world sounded softer, but the noises [Lina] heard were clear.” Lina’s family seems to be Middle Eastern in origin—her father calls her the Arabic endearment “habibti”—and they all have brown skin. Both the neighborhood and the assisted living home are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-21-inch double-page spreads viewed at 57.3% of actual size.)

Readers will savor this calm, kind, and loving moment between a granddaughter and her grandma.