Book Review: Snowman's Story, a Wordless Picture Book by Will Hillenbrand

A brown bear and a red fox give the snowman form and life. A penguin holds onto a green-bound book while awaiting the snowman’s final make-over. The snowman is intent upon expressing appreciation for life by reading the book in its entirety to the bear, the fox, and the penguin.  

At the snowman’s turning of the last page, the bear joins the fox and the penguin in heading toward a nearby cave for a good night’s sleep. With the crescent moon still low in the snowy, starless sky, the snowman keeps awake long enough to make sure of his friends’ safe entries within the cave before falling asleep with the closed book clasped tightly by both hands. 

The bunny leaves the hat to tiptoe alongside the snowman’s nodding head and wrench the book from the snowman’s relaxed grip. The snowman manages to call loudly enough to rouse the bear, the fox, and the penguin from the cave. The four friends near the cliff’s edge just as the bunny completes a big leap to the opposite cliff’s side.

A leafless tree whose roots dangle cliff-ward and whose trunk lends itself nicely to falling and forming a bridge offers the four friends hope of apprehending the thief and recovering the book. The bear and fox pull -- and the penguin pushes -- the snowman up a frozen waterfall and into a snowball fight with the bunny. 

After snowballs knock hat and snowman over, the four friends question whether to keep following snow-filled tracks. Once through a large, leafless tree’s heavy door, they realize that a great story read by the rabbit to six bunnies around a warm fireplace sounds equally well by the snowman to everyone outside.

So Snowman’s Story shares culturally enriching, educationally entertaining adventures with pre-schoolers to second-graders aged 3 to 7 years and story-lovers of all ages, thanks to:

• Amazon.com, Inc.’s Two Lions trademark;
• Jen Browning, designer;
• Katrina Damkoehler, designer; and
• Will Hillenbrand, jacket and page illustrator and text author/artist with chalk pastel, china marker, collage, colored pencil, crayon, ink, kneaded eraser, pixels, 6B graphite pencil, transparent tape, and watercolor. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

In "Snowman's Story", a bunny does what comes naturally upon encountering a hat: she climbs inside.
rabbit in hat: Jennifer Morton (jennratonmort), CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/jennratonmort/5042175152/

Serious snowball fights ensue in "Snowman's Story" as a bunny absconds with Snowman's book.
bursting snowball: Jake Guild (SimpleSkye), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/simpleskye/9176010952/

In "Snowman's Story", Snowman scales dauntingly frozen waterfalls -- succeeding only with aid from bear, fox, and penguin -- in pursuit of a thieving bunny who hops and jumps easily across formidable landscapes.
"Niagara in winter"; tinted lithograph by Edward E. Burrill (1835 - 1913), published 1874 in Murdock's American Landscapes, monthly series of views of American states and territories, by Murdock Brothers Publishers (Boston, Massachusetts)
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Popular Graphic Arts Collection: No known restrictions on publication, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) @ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647216/

"Snowman's Story: Book Trailer/Pre-order" (1:38)
Uploaded September 22, 2014, by Will Hillenbrand to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GK3OM_RtMM

Will Hillenbrand's elegant details that increase the enchantment of "Snowman's Story" include a night of a crescent moon as backdrop for bunny's theft of Snowman's book.
crescent moon over Niagara Falls: Heather Rhoades (hannamyluv1), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/127630281@N02/16605729402/

Hillenbrand, Will. 2014. Snowman's Story. New York, NY: Two Lions.