SNOWBEAR’S CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN

Cut-paper collage is the artistic medium for this adroitly illustrated story of preparing for Christmas day by day throughout December. The first spread shows Snowbear examining his calendar, and the following pages follow the pattern of “On the 1st day . . .”—with the ordinal number highlighted in color. Each day Snowbear engages in a different activity or preparation for the holiday season, often with the help of one of his group of smaller animal friends. On the 25th day, Snowbear and his friends gather around his decorated tree to open their presents and celebrate Christmas together. Smythe uses a wide variety of textured papers and cloth for her attractive collages, with cut-paper snowflakes to decorate the midnight-blue endpapers. The story is straightforward enough to introduce the concepts of preparing for the Christmas season to younger preschoolers. Though the story itself is simple, it actually conveys quite a few concepts: counting by ordinal numbers, the calendar and passage of time, and the process of preparing for an event through sequential steps. (Picture book. 2-6)