Ten Ways to Hear Snow

Luminous aquatint-like views of snow-covered neighborhood streets by Pak (Maud and Grand-Maud) contribute serenity to this story about senses and perception. A blizzard has ended, and Lina heads to visit her grandmother, Sitti. As she considers Sitti's diminishing eyesight en route, Lina realizes that snow is not just seen, but heard, and starts to list its different sounds: the "scraaape scrip" of a snow shovel, the "ploompf" of snow dislodged by a bluejay, the "drip, drip" of mittens drying. At Sitti's apartment, the two make warak enab (grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb), assembling the rolls and joking as they go: "Mine looks like a mustache!" Lina says, holding a roll under her nose. How does Sitti knows that it has snowed? "Each morning I open the window and listen," Sitti tells the girl, and her sharp hearing supplies the final item on Lina's list. Deliberately paced, peppered with sound words, and centered around a close-knit family's routines and meals, this story by Camper (the Lowriders in Space series) is just right for winter reading. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

K-Gr 3--Perhaps only someone who has lived in a snowy place and loved it would find 10 ways to hear snow. This poetic undertaking is as simple as a walk to a grandparent's home and, ultimately, just as heartwarming. Lina hears a muffled sound, first in the morning when no one is moving after a blizzard the day before, a thwomp when the snow falls off a branch that sways under the weight, and the scrape of shovels as sidewalks are cleared. She wonders if Sitti, her grandmother, will know that it has snowed, and goes to tell her, and to make stuffed grape leaves, a Lebanese favorite. But the 10th way to hear snow is its quiet, and Sitti, who cannot see well, is well aware of the blizzard's aftermath. Camper's straightforward telling is imbued with lyrical moments: "Outside, the late blue afternoon was completely still" perfectly describes the color and cast of the day's blanketed scenery. Lina's skin is light brown, and her hair is black; her parents, too, have similar coloring, he with a moustache and calling her the Arabic endearment "habibti." The inclusion of that and a few other Arabic words is seamless. In muted pastel colors, with foamlike blocks of snow lining branches, roofs, and hedges, Pak re-creates the sculptured effect of snow--that it covers the landscape, and in doing so, highlights it: eyebrows of white over windows, bumps where there had been bushes, drifts scattershot up the trunks of trees. VERDICT Not since Ezra Jack Keats in Snowy Day and Karen Gundersheimer in Happy Winter has snow been so lovingly depicted, in a counting game for children in all seasons.--Kimberly Olson Fakih, School Library Journal