Snow Day

Words by Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird

Illustrated by Ashley Thimot

Nimbus Publishing

978-1-77471-311-2

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

November 2024

 

Most of Canada is currently under a blanket of snow and we can anticipate that somewhere sometime within the next several months, children will be enjoying a snow day when schools are closed, vehicles are asked to stay off the roads, and snowplows and shovels are busy at work. 

From Snow Day, written by Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird, illustrated by Ashley Thimot

For this Indigenous child, the day starts with the quiet that comes from a street laden with snow and bereft of motion except from the softly-falling snow. But then she's outside, bundled up and exuberant with the promise of play and a day without school. In rhyming text, writer Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird follows the child as she slips and slides, giggles and wiggles, and stomps and plods alongside her pup.

 

As her mom begins the task of digging out her car and shovelling the driveway, the child and her dog imagine tea parties and caterpillars made of snow. (Illustrator Ashley Thimot indicates imagined elements with red inked items as in the illustration below.)

From Snow Day, written by Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird, illustrated by Ashley Thimot

She rolls through the snow as her mom scoops it up

making snowflake tea with her hands like a cup.

 

She offers some to puppy: "One lump or two?

A little bit for me and a little bit for you."

And after a fun day of play, there's the familiar doffing of the multiple layers of clothing to hang to dry, a warm hot chocolate, and the sharing with her parents and baby brother, before heading to bed to anticipate more fun the next day.

The ground is new,

a fresh page for her pen

 

And if she's lucky

tomorrow

she can do it all again.

From Snow Day, written by Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird, illustrated by Ashley Thimot

Reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats's classic The Snowy Day, Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird depicts the familiar joy of a child experiencing a day of snow and freedom to play. But by making her text rhyming and focusing her story on an Indigenous family, Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird, a mixed Cree writer from Nova Scotia, gives us a different kind of story. It's still about the wonder of play and snow but there's a rhythm to it that carries it along from early-morning quiet to tucked-into-bed calm and all the boisterous and imaginative play in between.
 

Edmonton artist Ashley Thimot gets that quiet of a snow day right, but also capably depicts the cold the child ultimately feels, from her rosy cheeks and toque pulled down, and the relief of warmth in the house as she reveals her snow-day hair–her mom also has hat head!–and starts laying out wet clothing to dry. The snow is cold and textured and wet–evident in footprints left behind– and the dog is joyous and sodden. It's a true snow day.

 

As lovely as Ezra Jack Keats's story is, let's get excited about another snow day book but this one from Canada to show what we experience as children, and as adults with children, when those few snows days occur, and the world is a little different and open to new possibilities for play.

So Much Snow!

by Robert Munsch

Illustrated by Michael Martchenko

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-4617-3

32 pp.

Ages 3-8

August 2016

The collaborative team that brought us Canadian classics The Paper Bag Princess (Annick , 1980) and Thomas’ Snowsuit (Annick, 1985) and so, so many more, have returned to celebrate the onset of the winter season with their newest release, So Much Snow!

From So Much Snow! 

by Robert Munsch, 

illus. by Michael Martchenko

Regardless of her mother’s concern of a coming blizzard, little Jasmine is determined to go to school.  After all, it’s Pizza Day and no one wants to miss Pizza Day.  So bundled up in her multi-hued coat and brightly-coloured hat, scarf, mitts, and boots, Jasmine sets out with enthusiasm amidst the early flurries, singing


“Neat! Neat! Snowy feet!
Snowy feet can’t be beat.
Neat! Neat! Snowy feet!
Snowy feet can’t be beat. 
Wintertime is fun!” (pg. 4)

Even when the snow starts accumulating, up to her knees and then up to her bum, she’s still singing a version of her “Wintertime is fun” song, though perhaps with a little less enthusiasm.  By the time she is in sight of the school, that final line of her song has become a question. And, when it is only the top of her hat that peeks out from the drifts of snow, Jasmine has revised that line to “Wintertime is no fun.” (pg. 13)

A frozen Jasmine is rescued by the snowshoed custodian and his St. Bernard, only to become the focus of the school staff’s efforts to defrost her.  The reader will soon realize that Pizza Day has become a snow day and the school is attended by a skeleton staff.  Still Jasmine came for Pizza Day and pizza is what she will have, though not as she expected.

From So Much Snow! 

by Robert Munsch, 

illus. by Michael Martchenko

In So Much Snow!, Robert Munsch brings his characteristic absurdity to a typical situation, bundling up his story of a child’s earnestness with a sing-song refrain that reveals much.  Playing on a child’s desperation to go to school for an anticipated treat, regardless of the weather, Robert Munsch makes what could have been a dangerous situation into one of silliness, even developing Jasmine into a character who begins to recognize the nonsense of her situation.  But it’s Michael Marchenko, whose artwork children always associate with Robert Munsch, who brings that folly to life, with his bold colours and textured details of clothing, blankets, and interior and exterior features. (Check out the principal’s checkered pants, the school nurse's flowered boots and the lost mitten pinned to the bulletin board.) Michael Martchenko, who has illustrated many children’s books beyond those of Robert Munsch (one of my favourites for teaching is Enough by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000), will always be seen as the visionary behind Robert Munsch’s words; without his artwork, So Much Snow! would just be a cute story.  Together, though, Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko have created a snow day story to amuse children and gratify their teachers and parents who will understand completely the mind of a child determined not to missed out on something grand, regardless of a few metres of snow.

From So Much Snow! 

by Robert Munsch, 

illus. by Michael Martchenko