NINA SONI, SNOW SPY

Nina has a fun winter holiday with some new friends.

It’s Friday, and Nina and her younger sister, Kavita, are excited for the long weekend break from school. Everyone has exciting plans, like Nina’s best friend, Jay, who’s going skiing with his cousins. Nina’s family is getting the house ready to welcome some old friends of her parents, who have two children who are about Nina’s and Kavita’s ages. Nina comes up with the idea of building a snow fort and makes a list of all the fun things they could all do in it, like being snow spies! That night, Nina notices an unknown person visiting one of the houses on her street, but her neighbors are away on a monthslong vacation. Who could this Mystery Person (MP for short) be? Maybe Nina’s idea of snow spies came at just the right time. Nina, who enjoys making lists and sometimes has trouble focusing, is an earnest protagonist with classic worries about the sometimes-intricate levels of friendship. As in other Nina Soni titles, the text keeps to simple sentence structures without many clauses, making this book an optimal choice for emerging readers. Occasional grayscale illustrations, boxed-off definitions of some higher-level words, and Nina’s lists break up the text. Nina and Kavita are of Indian descent, Jay is of Indian and Norwegian descent, and the Sonis’ guests are Indian and Filipino American.

Snow good!