Jolly Snowmen by Ned Taylor

Jolly Snowmen by Ned Taylor
Buy Jolly Snowmen by Ned Taylor at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Zoe Page
Summary: From 5 to 1, this book's heaps of fun. Snowmen, snowmen, everywhere!
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 14	Date: July 2014
Publisher: Caterpillar Books Ltd
ISBN: 978-1848574243
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Snowmen are universally adored. Everyone I know who picked up this book, young and old, went Oooh, snowmen! There’s something so cheerful about this precious, somewhat rare creature, and the likes of Frozen have cemented this in the minds of the latest generation. A book about two balls of icy snow doesn't sound much, but add a scarf, coal eyes and a carrot nose, and the transformation is astonishing.

This is a counting backwards from 5 book and because that’s a more complicated skill than counting forwards, it’s for a slightly more advanced toddler and therefore a story is needed too to capture the attention. The story here is fun, festive and full of energy with the sort of bouncy rhyme that seems ubiquitous in counting backwards books.

Meet the five little snowmen. It’s a wintery day, perfect for playing out, and they have lots of fun. But, with every adventure, from snowball fights to sledging to ice skating, a little snowman vanishes in a poof of misadventure, until just one final lonesome one remains. Luckily, there’s a happy ending, with all the friends reunited and ready for a party. Perfect.

This book is special because of the 3D snowmen who litter the pages, ‘disappearing’ one by one. I love tactile books because they’re not very common and so seem all the more special, just like rare Mr Snowman himself who only comes out to play for a few weeks of the year. These snowmen are plastic, affixed to thick pages that can take their weight, so it has the appearance of an overgrown board book with cut outs and peep throughs. The design is well done and feels like it will withstand a lot of reading, a downfall in some other ‘concept’ books.

I must also mention the illustrations, because they are delightful. This is a proper winter wonderland down to the last detail, all snow topped trees, perfect white flakes fluttering from the sky, festive friends and more. They’ve done well to get so much colour into a book that, by design, needs to have a lot of white on every page, and I loved the touches like the ice rink café that took me straight back to Christmas week in the Alps last year.

Jolly Snowman is a jolly old book and I jolly well recommend it. Thanks go to the publishers for supplying a copy.

Lulu's Christmas by Camilla Reid and Ailie Busby is another cute, wintery one for this age group.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Jolly Snowmen by Ned Taylor at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.

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