THE SNOWMAN AND THE SUN

A snowman makes his way through the water cycle.

The snowman stands in the sun, wondering what will happen if he melts; a bald White boy sits near him. The snowman does, indeed, melt and then becomes water on the ground, wondering if he will evaporate. He turns into “tiny little water droplets,” morphs into a cloud, and falls back to the ground as snow. The snowman, now a snowdrift, spots the boy and asks to be made into a snowman again. The story, with text laid out in a somewhat cutesy, bouncy typeface, conveys elements of the water cycle, but some children may find it unsettling that it’s the protagonist who keeps morphing and, in the end, winks to the boy as snow on the ground when asking to be reformed. Visually, it can be somewhat confusing: Attempts to perhaps convey a surreal tone—the boy eating ice cream in winter; clouds with what appear to be buttons (are they also former snowmen?); a bee on a bicycle during winter; the boy’s ice cream hanging upside down as a kind of light bulb in his home; and more—may leave readers feeling baffled. In the end, readers see the newly rebuilt snowman, “waiting for the sun to appear,” and infer he will experience the same series of events once again. At least he’s smiling about it.

Bizarre.