Snow.

Shulevitz, Uri (author).

Related Features

As he did in Dawn (1974) and the Caldecott Honor Book The Treasure (1978), Shulevitz captures the small child’s joyful vision, which can see a world in Blake’s grain of sand--or in a snowflake. The innocent, small boy with his dog, uncluttered by adult experience, can see clearly what is happening around him. He counts each snowflake, one by one, until the world is white and the snow is everywhere. In contrast, the suave, sophisticated adults--the bookish authority, the cosmopolitan, the guy with a boombox, the brash announcer on TV--they are dismissive, they are certain: “No snow.” But they are wrong. The setting of the clear, lovely, detailed line-and-watercolor paintings is a combination of shtetl folk art and urban contemporary, until finally the gray sky and buildings and city are totally new and white. Then the boy is free to imagine the characters of Mother Goose dancing with him and his dog in the white world of snow. Like the pictures, the rhythm of the simple, poetic words evoke the child’s physical immediacy and sense of wonder as he watches snow “floating, floating through the air, falling, falling everywhere.” Kids will enjoy the small child’s triumph in the fact that he is right, even as they will recognize the exhilaration of a snowfall that changes what you thought you knew.