Amazon.com Review
Uri Shulevitz won a Caldecott Medal for his illustrated edition of Arthur Ransome's The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, and has won numerous other awards for illustrating his own books. Not surprising, then, that he'd create such a lovely book as Snow, a touching story about childish hope, grumpy pessimistic grownups, and the wonder of snowfall. Will the snow come? (Oh, please?) In the first scene there is none, but the second has--if you can find it--a single flake. Then there are more--but they melt. And then, finally... joy! These are unusually subtle illustrations for a children's book: so many illustrators try to out-do each other with lurid effects and excessive brightness, but many of Shulevitz's exquisite panels are close to monotone. He paints whole cityscapes in a dozen shades of gray, with small human figures who you notice (at second glance) have coats of gray-green, gray-blue, or gray-brown. The adults have tiny Edwardian parasols or handle-bar moustaches. The abstract, atmospheric, folktale effect is heightened by a pared-to-the-bone text, just a few words per page. "'It's nothing,' said man with hat. Then three snowflakes. 'It's snowing,' said boy with dog." Snow perfectly captures the transformative nature of snow and the result is magical. Click to see a sample spread. Illustrations and text ©Uri Shulevitz, reprinted with permission from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (Ages 3 to 6) --Richard Farr
From Publishers Weekly
In this companion to Dawn and Rain Rain Rivers, Shulevitz uses text as spare as a December landscape to cast a spell of winter magic. Despite predictions to the contrary ("'No snow,' said radio"; "'It'll melt,' said woman with umbrella"), a boy and his dog spy a single snowflake and rush outside in gleeful anticipation. Sure enough, one snowflake turns into two, two into three, and before long snow is "dancing, playing,/ there, and there,/ floating, floating through the air." In a lovely fantasy sequence that hints at the wonder children find in snowfall, a trio of Mother Goose characters climb down from a bookshop window to join the boy and his dog as they frolic through the city streets. The Caldecott Medalist works a bit of visual alchemy as the tale progresses, gradually transforming the chilly gray watercolor washes with flecks of snow, until his cityscape is a frozen fairyland. Pure enchantment from start to finish. Ages 3-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2-When a young boy sees a single snowflake fall, he rejoices that a major storm is on the way, despite predictions to the contrary. But it is the child who prevails as the "snowflakes keep coming and coming and coming." Shulevitz's outstanding illustrations, rendered in watercolor and pen and ink, enrich and extend the brief text. The boy and his dog appear in the lower right-hand corner of the appropriately white front endpapers, arms and legs joyfully pummeling the air, and readers can almost forecast his announcement, "It's snowing." Pictures are framed in varying amounts of white space, the largest frames engulfing the nay-saying adults. The illustrations gradually build to a two-page spread in which "the whole city is white." Shulevitz's cartoons are filled with humorous touches: buildings tilt; an oversized woman carries a tiny umbrella; a tall man wears an outrageously tall hat; a radio almost as big as the person carrying it appears to have eyes, nose, and mouth. The characters displayed in the window of "Mother Goose Books" come to life to cavort with the child among the swirling flakes. Youngsters will joyfully join the boy in his winter-welcoming dance.
Marianne Saccardi, Norwalk Community-Technical College, CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 2^-4. As he did in Dawn (1974) and the Caldecott Honor Book The Treasure (1978), Shulevitz captures the small child's joyful vision, which can see a world in Blake's grain of sand--or in a snowflake. The innocent, small boy with his dog, uncluttered by adult experience, can see clearly what is happening around him. He counts each snowflake, one by one, until the world is white and the snow is everywhere. In contrast, the suave, sophisticated adults--the bookish authority, the cosmopolitan, the guy with a boombox, the brash announcer on TV--they are dismissive, they are certain: "No snow." But they are wrong. The setting of the clear, lovely, detailed line-and-watercolor paintings is a combination of shtetl folk art and urban contemporary, until finally the gray sky and buildings and city are totally new and white. Then the boy is free to imagine the characters of Mother Goose dancing with him and his dog in the white world of snow. Like the pictures, the rhythm of the simple, poetic words evoke the child's physical immediacy and sense of wonder as he watches snow "floating, floating through the air, falling, falling everywhere." Kids will enjoy the small child's triumph in the fact that he is right, even as they will recognize the exhilaration of a snowfall that changes what you thought you knew. Hazel Rochman
Review
“Pure enchantment from start to finish. Shulevitz uses text as spare as a December landscape to cast a spell of winter magic [and] works a bit of visual alchemy as the tale progresses.” ―Starred, Publishers Weekly
“Outstanding . . . filled with humorous touches . . . Youngsters will joyfully join the boy in his winter-welcoming dance.” ―Starred, School Library Journal
About the Author
Uri Shulevitz is a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and, unlike many children, never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. There Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books, and soon he and a friend started making their own. At thirteen, Shulevitz won first prize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris's 20th district. In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked a variety of jobs: an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk at Tel Aviv City Hall. He studied at the Teachers' Institute in Tel Aviv, where he took courses in literature, anatomy, and biology, and also studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum. At 24 he moved to New York City, where he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and drew illustrations for a publisher of Hebrew books. One day while talking on the telephone, he noticed that his doodles had a fresh and spontaneous look―different from his previous illustrations. This discovery was the beginning of Uri's new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room, his first book, published in 1963. Since then he was written and illustrated many celebrated children’s books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, written by Arthur Ransome. He has also earned three Caldecott Honors, for The Treasure, Snow and How I Learned Geography. His other books include One Monday Morning, Dawn, So Sleepy Story, and many others. He also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books. He lives in New York City.
