IT’S SNOWING!
by Olivier Dunrea & illustrated by Olivier Dunrea
Against a shadowy pine forest at once mysterious and peaceful, a mother—human, or perhaps a sort of forest gnome—introduces her well-swaddled baby to the pleasures of a snowy night. As soon as Mama sees flakes coming down, she wraps herself and Baby in thick furs and “trundles” out, holding Baby up to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the snow, then demonstrates sledding down a hill, building a snow troll, and other joys. So evocative is Dunrea’s (Gossie, p. 879, etc.) finely detailed art that viewers will practically be able to feel the winter air on their own faces, and experience the deep quiet. The two retreat indoors at last, and the intimate episode ends with nearly the same words with which it begins: “Mama rocks the cradle. The cradle rocks Baby. Baby softly sleeps. Mama sighs and nods her head. Baby sighs and sucks his thumb.” There’s a feeling of reverence beneath the joy that connects this with both the adult sensibility of Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Illus. by Susan Jeffers, 1978) and the more childlike pleasures of Ezra Jack Keats’s Snowy Day (1962). (Picture book. 5-7)