SNOWMEN AT CHRISTMAS

The husband-and-wife team who created the popular Snowmen at Night revisits their snowy creations to see how snowmen celebrate Christmas. The rhyming text describes how the snowmen (and snow women, snow children and one snow dog) gather late at night in the empty town for a holiday gathering. They decorate a tree, play games and enjoy icy-cold snacks (snow cones, of course) before the snowman Santa arrives with presents made of snow for all. Carols around the tree conclude the festivities and the snow folk take up their proper posts again just before the sun rises. The illustrations are infused with mysterious blue or lavender light that highlights the rounded figures of the snow people, with lots of additional sparkling effects from the town’s Christmas lights and streetlights. The snowmen are quite lively for characters with no legs and twig-thin arms, and they really do seem to have lives of their own that exist on some other icy plane. As in the previous story, there are tiny hidden pictures to search for in each illustration. (Picture book. 4-8)