Snowmen Once Again

One of my favorite winter books is Snowmen At Night by Caralyn Buehner.  We had the board book version and we would read it all year when Isaac was younger.  There is also Snowmen at Christmas, which is charming, but not as good as the first one in my opinion.

There is now a third Snowmen book, Snowmen All Year.  Isaac insisted he did not like it, but he had a rather suspicious smile on his face when it was over.  Again, not as good as the first book, though.  Snowmen at Night was different when it was first published -- the story was clever and tapped into a childhood question that had never really been explored, and the illustrations seemed to glow making it seem like that was really snow on the page illuminated in the moonlight.

With each successive book the charm loses its appeal and the illustrations now seem ordinary, especially when most of the story takes place in the daytime.  The one thing, however, that the story has retained is the sense of loss that children feel once the snowmen have melted away and their fervent wish that they could last forever.

It may not become our favorite winter story, but this one has its place, if only as a reminder that winter will come again and the snowmen will return.