Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Winter Friends
Illustrator: Hiroe Nakata
Picture Book
For ages 4 to 7
Random House, 2005 ISBN: 978-0385746267
Winter in the city can be wonderful. After a big snow storm it is as if the “city’s tucked up/fast asleep” and it is quiet for a change. At least it is until the snow plows start moving through the streets. When a little girl goes out she finds one little blue mitten lost in the snow. Footsteps in the snow lead away from it which “seem to spell,/The mitten’s mine.”
And so she picks the mitten up and as she follows the footsteps the little girl watches her breath twist in the air in front of her. She listens to the drip of icicle water landing on a post box. The footsteps keep on going but the little girl has to stop for a moment or two to make a snow angel with its “gown of lace.”
Then, at last, the little girl meets up with the owner of the blue mitten and the lost mitten is reunited with its mate on a little boy’s hands. The little girl and the blue mitten boy become fast friends and soon they are making a snow baby, walking through the park, sledding down the hill together, and feeding the pigeons. Then it is home and time for hot chocolate party. The children sip their hot drinks and listen to the wind telling them that “more snow” is on the way.
In this splendid book Mary Quattlebaum tells a charming story of a special snowy winter’s day using a series of image filled poems which roll off the tongue with ease and which, in the case of the hill sledding poem and several others, delight the eye as well. Readers will enjoy the way one can move from poem to poem as the little girl walks through the city streets from place to place, and as she has her little adventures with her new friend.
