This wonderfully illustrated book is about how a kid perceives snowfall. Throughout the book, the adults in his life, and the radio and TV deny the coming snow, but the boy and his dog celebrate the snow from the first flake until the city is blanketed. It's fun because the boy is just as exuberant from the first flake to the millionth. ( )

School Library Journal 12/1/1998

PreS-Gr 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

Personal Review:

As the boy and his dog rejoice and celebrate a simple act of nature, others in the city are too caught up in their daily activities and modern conveniences to notice and acknowledge it's happening. Large illustrations dominate each page and the snow continues to fall until "The whole city is white." Simple, yet powerfully effective. ( )

Please see my review of The Wall for my comments about this book. ( )

This is a 1999 Caldecott honor book. This is a story about a boy that sees one snowflake and gets excited about it starting to snow. The town people blow him off because it's only one flake. There was no mention of snow on the radio or television even though there were more snowflakes falling. He kept his excitement up and finally, many snowflakes were falling until the whole town turned white.

I chose this book because of the simplicity of words and pictures. As I read this story to my three year old, he would say snow every time I turned the page. I find this book to be very useful for beginning readers because of the repitition throughout the story.

I would use this as an extension of a weather lesson. They could see how snow starts out with one flake and then many join in. I would also have the children do a winter collage and tell their story to the class. ( )

The story was about how the skies were gray and how the whole city was. One snowflake came down and the boy tells everyone that it is snowing and everyone said it is nothing. Then two snowflakes came down and the boy told people it was snowing again and they still had doubts. Then it started snowing a lot and the whole city turned white.

I liked this book because the little boy had so much hope and it ended up snowing a lot like he wanted it to. I also liked how it talked about in the beginning how everything was gray and at the end of the story everything was white.

I would bring in water colors and have the students paint what the story looked like in the beginning. I could also do a creative writing exercise.