Book Review/The Big Snow
The Big Snow
By Berta and Elmer Hader
Hardcover $17.95
Macmillan Company
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Written by Berta and Elmer Hader in 1948, this children’s book is still in print and still a popular book for children ages 4 to 8. It is children’s classic and despite its age is still connecting today’s children with a book loved by previous generations.
The book was awarded the coveted Caldecott Medal in 1949. It has a strong story as well as descriptive illustrations by the famous author/illustrators whose bibliography covers six pages in one book about the couple. The story shows how different animals prepare for winter weather to survive long, cold, snowy winters. It explains animals get their food.
The book is a great resource to use to teach students about the seasons and how animals survive. The Haders use animals in the woods around their home as live models.
Information about this book says they were inspired to write this book because of the big snows they receive where they live in New York.
When the geese begin to fly south, the leaves flutter down from the trees and the cold winds begin to blow from the north, the animals of the woods and meadows, big and small, prepare for the long, cold winter ahead when the countryside is hidden under a deep blanket of snow. They gather food and look for warm, snug places in the ground, trees, caves or thickets, where they can find protection against the icy winds.
The Haders had been writing and illustrating books as a team since their first book was released in the 1920s. Their last book "Two is Company, Three’s A Crowd," was published in 1965, a delightful book about wild geese and a farm couple. While the only Hader book still in print is "The Big Snow," there is a plan for more of their work to be reprinted.
Forest animals prepare for winter in different ways. Some store food, fly south, grow thick fur, or get ready for a long nap. But when the animals are surprised by a snowfall that blankets their homes and covers their food, an old man and woman see to it that they are fed.
I don’t think young readers would mind, or even notice that not every page has color illustrations. Some are line drawings in black and white that are so detailed, the creature looks alive on the page. The story line begins with some furious honking as the wild geese flying south signaling that it’s time for the other animals to prepare for winter.
This timeless classic is vital as a children’s book today as it was 60 years ago when it was first published. New teachers and new parents should discover this book and develop a voice for each of the animals as the read the story aloud to children.
(Bill Duncan is a book reviewer for Currents.)