****Martin MacGregor's Snowman

by Lisa Broadie Cook

illustrated by Adam McCauley

Reviewed April 5, 2004.
Walker and Company, New York, 2003.  32 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (E COO).

Martin MacGregor lives for snowman building.  Last year, he built the biggest snowman in the neighborhood.  This year, it’s simply not snowing.  But Martin is too creative to be stopped by that for long.  With every month’s disappointment, he tries making a new substitute snowman.  In November, he covers his baby sister with flour.  In December, he covers his dog with cotton balls.  Every month, he gets in trouble.  Grown-ups don’t seem to understand.

The book does end happily.  Martin finally gets a blizzard in April, exactly what he was longing for all winter.  Of course, then in May he stands at the window looking at the rain and wishes to go swimming and build sand castles.

I felt great sympathy for Martin.  Since we moved away from Los Angeles, we always seem to live places where some years you get lots of snow, but others you get hardly any at all.  My youngest son may not be a big snowman builder, but the look on his face some mornings when he had expected snow exactly matched Martin’s.  (My son just wants a day off school.)  This book has brilliant illustrations and will make anyone laugh as the reader sees much more quickly than Martin that his fabulous ideas are actually bad ones.

Copyright © 2004 Sondra Eklund.  All rights reserved.

-top of page-