Snow Scene by Richard Jackson, illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Lizzie Nolan is our guest blogger for this post. She's a Senior Librarian in Youth Services at the San José Public Library. Under the great inspiration of this very blog she helped start a mock Odyssey award blog for great childrens’ audiobooks at Ears on the Odyssey. 

Snowny sights melt into springtime scenery in Richard Jackson’s and Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s picture book guessing game. With sparse rhyming text and lush and thickly textured illustrations, Snow Scene offers a delightful experience for a lap reader, but is it Geisel award worthy? 

This a dynamic pairing of publisher and illustrator; Neal Porter Roaring Brook Press and Laura Vaccaro Seeger are previous Geisel winners. Author Richard Jackson is also publisher turned writer and has previously worked with award winning illustrators such as Jerry Pinkney and Kevin Hawkes.  

The strongest aspect of this read is its “page-turning” dynamic. The guessing game setup that dominates this book is paired with illustrations that peak ever so subtly on the corners of the right hand side. This also makes for simple question and response construction which is an easy one for young readers to follow. The illustrations are also demonstrative of the text. The drawings of “Snowmen” “Red Ear” “Frosty Hair” are large and exacting. Even when the more abstract concepts like the months of the year appear the illustrations are descriptive: April is showers, May is flowers. The illustrations also match the text as they subtly morph from winter to spring. The visual joke at the end of a snow-capped mountain being a “winter’s hat” is a rewarding surprise that could easily hook readers into re-reading this book again. 

Furthermore, the text is only 71 words long with many sight words and rhymes. There are sight words within the line rhymes (“here/ear” there/hair”) and also sight words within internal rhymes (“slight white” “night white”) There are not oddly, any repeated words. However, there are some more challenging rhymes. The rhyme pattern breaks at the very end of the book with lines: “Come see this. And this. And this.” 

Most troublesome is probably the rhyme: “What now?” “Icy Bough”: 

Bough is a pretty high-level word to decode with that tricky -ough ending that makes oh so many sounds in English language. Bough, a large branch of tree, is a very descriptive word that most children and adults might only be familiar from the Rock-A-Bye Baby lullaby. (“...When the Bough breaks… The Cradle will fall”) 

Lastly, the book’s font is big and clear, but found on lots of different areas of the page throughout the book. In the “Of crows” “What now?” page, readers have to read the lines of text upwards and across (instead of down and across) to understand the rhyme. For a child still learning the flow of the written word this might be confusing. 

Snow Scene’s evocative illustrations and page turning pace make this a highly enjoyable text to read with a child, but beginning readers might find a few moments of challenge if trying on their own.