From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 10:39:48 -0600

While some of you are recovering from the surprise of hearing that
"Snowflake Bentley" (Houghton Mifflin, 1998) is the 1999 Caldecott Award winner, I'm beginning to realize that this recently announced award-winning book is too rapidly being categorized in another way. Nonfiction!

Wait a minute.

There are two texts in "Snowflake Bentley." Both were written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, whose name unfortunately does not appear on my copy of the short version of the ALA press release distributed immediately following Monday's announcement.

In "Snowflake Bentley," a secondary text containing biographical information runs parallel to the story about Willie Bentley. Story is the key word. The main narrative is formatted exactly like a picture book story. That's what it is - a lyrically written story about a remarkable individual whose life was consumed by his obsession to demonstrate the individuality of each snow crystal to the world.

Although we cannot have access to the collective comments and extensive discussion of the 1999 Caldecott Committee, some of these individuals are part of the CCBC-Net community. They are most certainly are free to express themselves as individuals without breaching the confidentiality of committee discussion. We invite you - and all others who were not on the Caldecott Committe (that's most of us) - who know this book already to offer comments on its illustrations.

To get you going, I'll write what Caldecott Committee Chair Barbara Barstow is quoted in the ALA press release as saying, "...has a beautiful and thoughtful design, a poetic and informative text, distinguished illustrations, universal appeal and resonance. Mary Azarian, a Vermont artist who loves snow as much as Wilson Bentley, has created strong and skillfully carved woodcuts that portray sensible, sturdy characters and a timeless rural landscape."

I also propose that as we each examine "Snowflake Bentley" in hand - and I imagine most of us have not yet had this opportunity - we consider it to be both a story and a biographical sketch. By immediately consigning this handsome book containing such appreciation for the natural world to classroom curriculum we narrow its immense possibility for providing sheer pleasure.

Yesterday I read the story in "Snowflake Bentley" to a classroom of second graders who don't pay much attention to anything boring them. This classroom "looks like America," containing children of many colors and socio?onomic backgrounds. While I was reading to them, the children looked carefully at the illustrations in this book with a fresh gold sticker on its front. They gave their undivided attention to the story and the pictures. Someday they'll read the sidebar biographical material, but for now they have the pictures in their heads, and they also have the story. Perhaps they will look more closely at the snowflakes fallling on their mittens during the rest of the winter - and maybe forever.

Like the little child in "Snow" by Uri Shulevitz (Frances Foster/Farrar Straus Giroux) - also a 1999 Caldecott Honor Book - perhaps some of these kids might insist to their grown-ups not only that it IS snowing, but that each snowflake is unique. That level of wonder came from a story about wonder. A story in which the art and text are completely unified. A distinguished picture book for children.

How about some comments about Azarian's woodcuts, and how they, also, tell the story? Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education University of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Thu 04 Feb 1999 10:39:48 AM CST