Snow Day!

In the midst of another round of unseasonably high temperatures, I'm dreaming of a snow day.

Before Morning, by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Beth Krommes needs to be your next picture book read aloud, whether to your whole class, or to the child on your lap.

Study the details on the cover carefully for foreshadowing.

Read the story in the pictures along with the story in the words.

Make your wish...and see what happens!

Best in Snow, by April Pulley Sayre is a great companion to Before Morning. With rhyming text and gorgeous photos, Sayre teaches about the formation of snow and the way it changes with temperature shifts. There are more facts in the back of the book.

A Poem for Peter by Andrea Davis Pinkney, and illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson, is the perfect third book in this snowy trio. It, too, is a poem. As Pinkney describes, it is a " 'collage verse,' 'bio-poem,' or 'tapestry narrative' in which factual components are layered with a mix of elements." Readers learn the story of the man who created one of the THE most iconic snowy day book AND transformed children's book publishing at the same time by including a "brown-sugar" "cocoa sprite" character.

January Mosaic

Not many photos in January.
It was a good month, nonetheless.

SNOWFLAKES
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

Snow. We haven't had any yet, have you?  I'm not sure I want the reality of snow just yet -- driving in it, shoveling it. But if I think of snow as "the poem of the air," then I'm just about overcome with anticipation.

Make your own snowflake at Make-a-Flake.

Check out all things snow at SnowCrystals.com.

Snowflake Bentley's website is here. The image I used is one he made. According to the website, "Wilson Bentley did not copyright his photographs and thus they are in the public domain and free to use for any purpose." You just can't sell them, or make them into something to sell. Thank you, Mr. Bentley.

The Poetry Friday round up is at Yat-Yee Chong.

Snow

Snow

by Cynthia Rylant

illustrated by Lauren Stringer

Harcourt, November 2008

review copy provided by the publisher

I'm not ready for the reality of snow yet:  slogging, shoveling, slipping, sliding. But I'm more than ready to dream about snow and remember all the different kinds of snow.

That's what Cynthia Rylant's new book is good for: dreaming and remembering and snuggling up with her descriptions of fat-flaked school-closing snows, light snows that sit on even the smallest tree limbs, heavy snows that bury evidence of the world, and more.  Rylant meditates on the beauty of snow, the way it reminds us of all things impermanent, and its place in the natural cycle of life (at least in places far enough north and/or not withstanding global warming).

Lauren Stringer's illustrations do a perfect job of combining the warmth of indoors and the cold of outdoors during snow.  There is a fun subplot in the illustrations to discover after savoring Rylant's words.