Ever notice that snowmen, no matter how meticulously and lovingly put together, always look disheveled the next day? Droopy carrots, coal-black eyes askew, bellies not quite so round and jolly? Sure, you’ve blamed it on the sun, the neighbourhood kids, cracks in the space-time continuum, but what if it’s not that at all? What if snowmen participate in nocturnal activities beyond our awareness, beyond our comprehension? What if, when the moon rises, they wake up, and start to roam? If this is true, then I am personally going to melt every last one of them to the ground with my hair dryer, because sentient snowmen are the stuff of nightmares (and bad movies.) Sorry Frosty. Just the idea of rotund, cold-blooded creatures wandering the streets at night, smoking their corn-cob pipes, puddling in corners, it’s just too much. I haven’t been this frightened since I read the classic distopian cautionary tale, Attack of the Killer Snow Goons by Bill Watterson.

Happily (and to my great relief), the chilly folk that populate Snowmen at Night are partiers, not predators. Mayhem may be high on their agenda, but it’s mayhem of the joyful sort, made of snowball fights and cups of ‘ice-cold cocoa’. No need to fire up the hair dryer, these snowmen are quite harmless and resolutely cheerful. In fact, one read of this book and you’ll wish you were a little more cold-blooded…

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It’s snowing.

It’s been snowing for days. Weeks, actually. More than twice the average and closing in on a record set in 1974, with 35 cm last weekend and another 20 cm expected this week. It’s also cold, bitterly and stubbornly cold. I love winter. Really, I do, and all this snow makes me feel like a kid. But as I wade through waist-high drifts on foot (boot, actually), and ride over the spine-rattling equivalent of moguls dimpling our city streets, the childlike wonder is fast giving way to adult exhaustion. Short of opening a Tauntaun and settling down for a long winter’s gut-nap, there is no relief in sight, other than the great indoors. I need a snow day. Or maybe, I need The Snow Day by Komako Sakai.

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I stand corrected. And in this case, I will even sit corrected. My usual infallible judgement with regard to covers has failed me, and I have fallen hard and fast for a book I’d previously dismissed. Week after week City Dog, Country Frog remained unbrowsed on the shelves of bookstores I frequented, a few uncharitable (and unspoken) thoughts directed at the loosely painted watercolour of a dog sporting a frog on its head. Not a fan of this style of overtly sentimental illustration. And yet…the book kept showing up in the ubiquitous year end ‘best of’ lists, and of late, as a front runner for the Caldecott medal, America’s highest honour for children’s picture book illustration. Clearly, ‘they’ were wrong, and I was right.

A few days after Christmas I found myself in a bookstore, the cash faucet still dripping after a month of unbridled spending, and there they were, those watery, plaintive, puppy-dog eyes. And so, after months of resistance, I picked up the book and flipped through the pages.

Oh. I get it. I’m dumb.

City Dog, Country Frog is a beautiful book. It is inspired, and it’s funny. It is also, well, let me explain…

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