Winter Is for Snow by Robert Neubecker (review)

This rhyming picture book in two voices follows a brother and sister with opposing views about winter: “Winter is for wonderful!/ Winter is for snow!” says the boy, but his sister responds, “Winter is for cold and damp./ It must be ten below!” The boy continues to rhapsodize, with the occasional flying fancy about sled dogs and penguins, and finally succeeds in coaxing his sister out to the local sledding hill, which converts her to a snow-lover. While the dual-voice structure, with the boy’s dialogue in black text and the girl’s in brown, offers readaloud and performance possibilities, the text is too often strained both in vocabulary and scansion. There’s an amiable cartoonish vigor to the illustrations, though, with the thick dark lines touched with digital color and softly patterned snowflakes. The girl’s subtly changing face hints at her waning resistance to the season, helping ground what otherwise seems like a fairly sudden shift. Winter-haters may appreciate having an acknowledgment, however brief, of their point of view, and the opportunity for some wintry theater may ironically amuse those youngsters stuck inside due to the weather.