"The Snowman" Picture Book Review - Amanda

Picture Book Review

“The Snowman” Raymond Briggs

I have chosen to write about the book entitled “The Snowman” because I bought it in a charity shop a few weeks ago and haven’t had the chance to look at it properly. It is the first time that I’ve read this book although not a Christmas goes by without my family watching the highly popular film on T.V. I’m finding it hard to get the music out of my head while writing this review!

“The Snowman” is the story of a little boy called James, who builds a snowman who comes to life and becomes a great friend, he takes James flying through the sky to a party with lots of snowmen and snowwomen and James meets Father Christmas. The story takes place over 24 hours as the snowman comes to life in the night and has melted away the next day. The story starts and ends with James getting out of bed in the morning.

The story is told in the third person in the past tense, but the narrator uses observations to involve the reader such as:

“it’s hard to sleep when you’re thinking of a snowman outside all alone”.
And
“Ordinary snowmen never go inside a house but this snowman wanted to see everything”.

He also tells us exactly what James is thinking:
“The best thing to do would be to make a …
SNOWMAN”

The narrator has used italics, capital letters and elliptical dots to good effect as it helps the reader to emphasise certain words, creates suspense and makes the text more interesting to look at.

James asks himself questions as he is puzzled when he sees that the snowman has stopped smiling and is listening:
“What could he hear? Was he remembering something?”

The rhetorical questions continue at the end of the story when the narrator asks the reader
“Had he been dreaming?”.

We are relieved to discover it must have been real when James pulls the Christmas present that Father Christmas had given him the night before out of his pocket.

“The Snowman” is a ladybird book and about A6 size. The story consists of 24 pages which all contain pictures, 23 of these contain words. The front and back cover also have pictures on them and the inside covers are light blue with little snowmen printed all over them. The front cover is a picture of James in his pyjamas and dressing gown and the snowman flying through the sky. The snowman looks calm and happy with a smiley face and James looks bewildered and anxious with his mouth half-open and his eye brows raised. I think this is an effective cover as it conveys the magic of the story and shows the most exciting part. The picture on the back cover is of James and the snowman inside James’ house. They are in the living room and they are standing either side of the Christmas tree. The colourful baubles and fairy lights are shining brightly and James and the snowman look as if they are playing a game. The snowman is standing up straight with his arms out and James is pointing and smiling at the snowman. The snowman is smiling back at him. This picture shows the close relationship between the two characters and they stand out along with the Christmas tree against the dull, brown, gloomy background of the living room. This signifies that the story of “The Snowman” is anything but dull and boring.

The layout of the pages varies although every page has a 1cm border of snow flakes against a blue background. Some pages have considerably more text than others, however the fact that the text is split into two or three sections makes it seem short and manageable to read for a young child and is not off-putting to look at. The pictures are all pencil drawings in subdued wintry colours, mostly blue, white, grey and brown. Orange is used for James’ hair, cheeks and jumper and later for the warm glow of the fire and the light of the fridge and freezer. The pictures are in boxes but also come into the borders which makes them appear more real.
The drawings of the snowman make him appear soft and cuddly as he is a large build and a lot bigger than James. He holds James’ hand throughout most of the story and is always smiling which shows how friendly he is.

This book can be understood entirely by looking at the pictures as it has a simple storyline and the vivid pictures show us exactly what is happening. The fact that it was made as a film with only music shows this. However, I think that the sound of an adult reading this to a child would be very comforting and therefore agree with the addition of words. If, conversely, we were to take the pictures away. I don’t think we would appreciate the book as much as we should. The pictures are not only beautiful but are humorous. We would lose the element of humour without the pictures.
An example of this is when the snowman goes inside James’ house. There are lots of pictures to illustrate the snowman stroking the cat, looking at his reflection in a bauble of the Christmas tree, putting a pineapple on his nose, nearly knocking a vase over and trying James’ father’s trousers on. There is also a picture of the snowman looking at some false teeth in a glass. Without these pictures, the reader would miss out on all of this as the narrator simply says:

“this snowman wanted to see everything.” and “The snowman tried everything including Mum’s perfume which nearly made him...sneeze!”

The images of the snowman which accompany these words are the funniest in the book and clearly show us the clumsy character of the snowman and are very amusing to look at.

I thoroughly enjoyed “The Snowman” and thought it was written in very simple language, told a magical story and used simple drawings which children would probably be able to copy quite easily. It’s a nice short story which would be perfect to read to children as a bedtime story on the run up to Christmas when they might actually wake up to snow the following morning!

I think the original had no words - I'm sure my copy is only pictures...