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Summary
Summary
Winter is for sledding, friends, snowmen, penguins! Winter is for snow!
In a rambunctious ode to everything winter, two siblings explore a snowy wonderland . . . and end up in the cozy warmth of family. Delve into Robert Neubecker's expressive and rejuvenating illustrations that celebrate snow and the coziness of friends and family at home. Only Robert Neubecker's magic touch could make kids love winter this much!
Author Notes
Robert Neubecker (www.neubecker.com) is a regular contributor to Slate.com, Business Week, Time, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. His books include Courage of the Blue Boy, Beasty Bath, Wow! America!, and Wow! City!, an American Library Association Notable book for 2005. A longtime New Yorker, Robert now lives with his growing family and the occasional moose on Iron Mountain in Park City, Utah.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Twosiblings hold decidedly different opinions on winter and snow in this simple, rhythmic paean to a city snowfall. Big brother wakes up gleefully to the fluffy white stuff piling up outside their apartment window: "Winter is for wonderful!/Winter is for snow!" But younger sister frowningly responds, "Winter is for cold and damp./It must be ten below!" And so goes their droll verbal point/counterpoint, reflected in fonts of different colors, as Sis reluctantly turns off her media devices and bundles up for their trudge to the local sledding hill. Along the way, Brother envisions the adventurous worlds of polar ice and snow that lie beyond their doorstep, and his sister slowly has a change of heart, ultimately tasting flakes and sledding with gusto. Back home enjoying hot chocolate and a cozy fire with Mom, she is a smiling convert to the joys of the season. The rhyming text, while slight, will hold children's attention as they pore over the appealing illustrative details, rendered in black line and bold color. Snowflake patterns, suffusing nearly every page, underscore the blanketing snowfall and create a cohesive visual motif. Equally suitable for a lapsit or group read-aloud, this title is a worthy purchase for collections needing additional winter-themed materials.-Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A boy works hard to persuade his younger sister that winter truly is the most wonderful time of the year in a story that suggests that Neubecker is also the type to enjoy bundling up and heading outdoors when the temperature drops. The siblings alternately narrate in color-coded verse, amplifying the story's performative potential: "Winter is for excellent!/ Come out and play with me!" shouts the boy. "Winter is to stay inside./ Please just let me be!" is his sister's response. Neubecker's snow- laden illustrations are crammed with activity while also revealing a certain emotional thawing that culminates in the girl catching not a snowflake, but a tiny heart on her tongue. Ages 3-5. Agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A boy delights at seeing snow outside his window ("Winter is for SNOW!"); his sister doesn't ("Winter! I say No"). Readers may not care that the book's rhymes aren't always thrilling; they'll enjoy the story's two facets: the siblings explore their increasingly snowy environment, simply but sensitively rendered by Neubecker, and the boy ultimately convinces his sister of the element's wonder. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A paean to wintertime and especially its snowy weather, this picture book fails to match the achievement of the many others that deal with this popular theme. The child pictured in the jacket art is an unabashed lover of all things winter, and in rhyming text, he extols the season's virtues to his curmudgeonly younger sister. Her responses (also rhyming) resist his enthusiastic praise of snowball fights, skating and the beauty of snowflakes "glittering like diamond dust." Since the book ends up being about her eventual, grudging warming up to wintertime, it's curious that she doesn't appear on the cover, and her change of heart seems rather abrupt, reading; "Winter is for all these things? / Is it really so? / Winter might not be so bad. // Winter is for SNOW!" Such pat lines are par for the course in the text, which isn't so much a story as it is a list. Illustrations show greater achievement, particularly in scenes depicting many characters milling about a snowy city landscape, evoking an animationlike flair. Another snowy day book, but not special enough to recall Keats' masterpiece. (Picture book. 3-5)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Siblings often disagree, but how can anyone not love winter? A brother tries to convince his grumpy sister to put down her electronic device and head outside to celebrate the glories of the season. Delicate snowflakes flutter down as children sled, skate, build snowmen, and ski, and the boy wants to be a part of it. Although his sister pleads, Please, just let me be! the boy refuses and, smiling, helps her into her snow boots and parka. The girl's look of alarm grows as he takes her on an imaginary dogsled ride over Arctic ice (complete with a grinning polar bear) and to the Antarctic, where penguins humorously march up and down frosty peaks in formation. Slowly, a smile forms on her face, and she begins to enjoy the delights of a day in the park, and a double-page spread depicts her joyfully running through the snow and shouting, Winter is for SNOW! Neubecker's signature style and brightly colored illustrations are, as always, child-centered and detailed. A rhyming, rollicking salute to the coldest season.--Gepson, Lolly Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MY 3-YEAR OLD daughter knows nothing of snow. She'd only just turned 2 when we moved to Rome - a spellbinding city in many ways but one where snow rarely falls. (In 2012, a blizzard ground the city to a halt, and Romans are still talking about it with wide-eyed amazement.) My daughter can't possibly remember the winters of her New York babyhood, but suddenly, about six months ago, she began to ask me when the snow would come. When would we play in the snow? Where was the snow hiding? I could only guess she was exhibiting a child's sixth sense for wonder: Snow is a portal out of the ordinary churn of life, forcing even grownups to go out and play. Coincidentally, and luckily for my daughter, three new picture books herald the majesty of snow, bringing its almost magically transformative power to any child who yearns for it. In "Big Snow," written and illustrated by Jonathan Bean, another child anxious to see a winter wonderland asks his mother again and again about the impending blizzard. Amazingly, she persuades her son - named David - to help her do chores around the house as he waits for the predicted snowfall. But something about each task (the fine, white flour used for cookie dough, the white sheets of his newly made bed) reminds the boy of what might be happening outside, and he can't resist dashing out to take a look. With each trip to the backyard, the weather gives David just a bit more of what he has been eagerly awaiting - until finally the flakes have accumulated so much they are "covering everything, white and cool." As with the hero of "The Snowy Day," by Ezra Jack Keats (1962), David, who like Keats's main character, Peter, is African-American, goes to sleep and dreams of snow. Peter, however, imagined the snow disappearing, while David's dream takes him in another direction. Here, the snow becomes a hapless and threatening force, howling and bursting through doors, piling up in drifts inside the tidy suburban home. (Apparently hellbent on cleaning even in her son's dreams, David's mother is shown pushing a vacuum through piles of snow, a steely look of determination in her eyes.) This fantastical moment ends as abruptly as it began when the boy's father arrives, stomping his shoes in the doorway and waking his son from his nightmare. We are suddenly and safely returned to the consoling home life - portrayed in happy and straightforward watercolor pictures - that has become the signature of Bean's work. It's a nifty trick: The brief and unexpected peril of the dream makes the long-anticipated moment when the family bundles up and goes out to enjoy the storm all the cozier. In his first picture book, "When It Snows," the British illustrator Richard Collingridge dives headlong into a fantasy of the season, showing it to be a vast and mountainous expanse of white, both eerie and enchanting. The story starts by explaining that "when it snows ... all the cars are stuck and the train disappears," but this wintry world looks as if the downfall has obliterated all traces of mundane existence. What's left is a Narnia-like land, with a giant snowman and the Queen of the Poles, a towering woman who wears a horned crown and lives in a gloomy forest with thousands of elves. A small, unnamed and apparently fearless boy, accompanied by his teddy bear, leads us through this journey - the illustrations initially luminous but growing continuously darker as he delves deeper into this mysterious world. But just as it seems the boy may be traveling into a somber fairy tale, the story twists sharply back to reality and the little boy finds himself reading the very same Collingridge book by the fire. Unfortunately, this self-referential ending feels abrupt and at odds with the rest of the book. "Winter Is for Snow" is a tale of two siblings - a brother who loves the icy flakes pouring down outside their apartment window and a sister who is cranky about it all - by the prolific children's book author and illustrator Robert Neubecker. These two start out like De si and Lucy, disagreeing about everything. "Winter is for fabulous! Winter is for snow," sings out the copper-haired brother. "Winter is for lots of clothes! And I don't want to go," deadpans his younger copper-haired sister. (Her blasphemy recalls a Carl Reiner quip: "A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.") These small urbanites argue back and forth in delightful, singsong rhyme, the brother joyfully throwing his arms up and kicking his legs out to add emphasis to his argument, which grows more elaborate with every page. "Winter is for glaciers, with walruses and seals," he pleads, "diving in the icy sea for scaly, fishy meals." Slowly but surely, he manages to dress his sister and edge her outdoors into a cityscape colorfully and whimsically depicted with a park jam-packed with people frolicking in an excellent variety of snow hats. Though she has resisted her brother's - and winter's - charms, even turning her attention to a beeping electronic device (at which point lesser brothers would have given up), we eventually see him pulling her along on a sled. And then, a little too easily, she finally changes her mind, declaring, "I love snow!" It's nice to see her hardworking brother win the argument and to see them both out enjoying the fresh air. But she was such a good curmudgeon - I missed her old self a little when she was gone. NELL CASEY is the editor of "The Journals of Spalding Gray" and "Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression." She is a former books columnist for Cookie magazine.
