Snow Story

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“Chloe watched a man across the street shovel snow. He pitched snow
from the sidewalks, chased it off the stairs and hedges, and scolded it
from the top of his car. But the snow just laughed at him, landing on
his clean walk as he turned away. Chloe also saw her mom below,
shovelling. She watched as her mom worked a little, then threw back her
head to feel the laughing flakes on her face. Right then, Chloe decided
that there were two kinds of grown-ups, the ones who liked snow and the
ones who didn’t. She figured out that the ones who did, also ate
bubble-gum ice cream and didn’t mind getting rained on, and that was
the kind she was going to be.”

As the title indicates, this is a story about snow or, more precisely,
how people react to snow. Hundal’s prose envelopes the reader like a
squall of lyrical images as she describes a snowy week through the eyes
of a young girl named Chloe. But by the end of the week, even little
Chloe becomes tired of the fluffy white stuff and begins to long for
spring.

Prose that creates so many evocative images is a serious challenge to
an illustrator. Fortunately, Charko’s superb paintings fit perfectly
with the text, making every page in the book a pleasure to read. Highly
recommended.