Snowmen at night book summary6/7/2023 ![]() As a boom box plays its song and a drummer taps his beat, neighborhood children join her in an energetic, pulsating dance culminating in a rousing musical parade. On a lovely summer day, a young African-American girl in a bright pink sundress and matching sneakers sees, smells, sings, claps and snaps her fingers to an internal rhythm. The beat is all around her when a girl takes a walk in the park with her mother. The snappy text will get toes tapping, but the information it carries is limited. Although today kuku is danced at all types of celebrations in several countries, it was once done after fishing, an activity acknowledged in the illustrations but not mentioned in the explanatory text. Kathak dancers use their facial expressions extensively in addition to the “movements of their hands and their jingling feet,” as described in the book. Unfortunately, these explanations are quite rudimentary. The dances depicted are described at the end, including kathak from India and kuku from Guinea, West Africa. The endpapers, with shoes and musical instruments, could become a matching game with pages in the book. Diaz’s illustrations show her background in animated films her active child dancers generally have the large-eyed sameness of cartoon characters. Overall, children included are racially diverse and vary in gender presentation. The ballet pages stereotypically include only children in dresses or tutus, but one of these dancers wears hijab. Read aloud, the zippy text will engage young children: “Tappity Tap / Fingers Snap,” reads the rhyme on the double-page spread for flamenco “Jiggity-Jig / Zig-zag-zig” describes Irish step dancing. In onomatopoeic, rhyming text, Bolling encourages readers to dance in styles including folk dance, classical ballet, breakdancing, and line dancing. 2-6)ĭancing is one of the most universal elements of cultures the world over. It would be difficult not to fall in love with this rollicking flight of imagination created by a terrific combination of talent. Perhaps the use of color to create light will assist young readers in their search for images of Santa Claus faces, rabbits, and dinosaurs that are hidden in the scenes. A palette of blues and yellows painted against one another create depth and shadow while illuminating the night and casting a moonlit glow on the scenery. ![]() Primary colors delicately form the winter wonderland where the secret, active life of these frozen friends is grinningly revealed. The illustrative Buehner uses oil paints over acrylics to bring this idea to dazzling life. While children sleep, their snowy creations gather for winter fun that includes ice-skating on a pond, hilltop sledding, and an enthusiastic snowball fight. Author Buehner imagines why snowmen may not look the same as they had the day before. By sharing your experience with us, you will be added to our team of On-line Contributors here, where you can also find our submission guideline.The work of this husband-and-wife team best known for The Escape of Marvin the Ape (1992) is always special here it comes together in a delightful story about the nocturnal activities of snowmen that is refreshingly original and visually sparkling. Thus, we are inviting you to share your experience of how you have used this story in your mathematics lesson with other members of the community. ![]() (Disclaimer: We received a complimentary inspection copy of this book from the publisher)Īddition & Subtraction Counting forwards to and backwards from 100Īt, we believe that stories can be meaningfully incorporated in mathematics teaching in different ways. All in all, ‘100 Snowmen’ could be useful for children aged 5+ years old to practise counting and adding up to 100 as well as writing number sentences. The inclusion of snow women, for example, could have been a simple way to make gender representation more diverse. ![]() As the title suggests, the presence of any female characters in the story is currently absent. As this is a mathematical story, gender diversity is important. Additionally, we would have loved for ‘100 Snowmen’ to have more of an actual storyline and characters to help engage children, and to avoid the ‘concept book’ feel. This is to help children appreciate the real world application of mathematical knowledge. While we love the visual aspect of the book in that it clearly represents each addition sentence with the corresponding number of snowmen, we would have preferred there to be a more meaningful purpose for counting and adding snowmen, like what we find in ‘Count Off, Squeak Scouts!’. Each combination of snowmen is accompanied by a number sentence. In Jen Arena’s ‘100 Snowmen’ (2013), different numbers of snowmen engaging in different activities are shown on each page.
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