Remembering Snow

Just Snow Already! – written and illustrated by Howard McWilliam
Flashlight Press, 2023

Since we are gripped in the terrifying effects of climate change, a picture book based on a child’s frustration at the lack of snow may seem ironic. It’s not.  There are many classics based on this age-old premise, and more are published every year. Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, Uri Shulevitz’s Snow, and Alvin Tresselt’s White Snow, Bright Snow, all date from the era when snow seemed like a strong possibility.  Other more recent books include Waiting for Snow by Marsha Diane Arnold and Renata Liwska, James Gladstone and Gary Clement’s My Winter City, Blizzard by John Rocco, and Snow Falls by Kate Gardner and Brandon James Scott. In Just Snow Already!, Howard McWilliam conveys the impatience of a child eager for the best part of winter, and oblivious to everything else.

My favorite sentence in the book is “Make it snow, Mom.”  This plea is preceded by his coffee-drinking dad checking the weather app on his phone, and remarking that the event could be imminent.  Next, McWilliam’s two-page spread familiarizes us with the boy’s neighborhood, populated by a diverse range of people living in lovely Victorian houses. His illustrations combine bright colors and broadly-drawn figures with an animation element, but also realistic interiors that could be updated Dutch domestic scenes.  The breakfast table features open cereal boxes, a bright green mug, Mom’s croissant and a bowl of fruit. It looks like the family is off to a good start of their day, if only it would snow. 

Gradually, the street becomes more filled with action.  Bicycle races, a postal worker who, unfortunately, trips on a hose and scatters her mail, a fire engine, and a truck full of exotic animals.  But this potential excitement is meaningless without snow.  The little boy is wiry and hyperkinetic, getting dressed as quickly as possible and leaping to the couch to look out the window.  He daydreams of all the activities that, in the absence of snow, will be denied to him. Although the book is sweetly humorous, readers will identify with his terror at the thought that it may never snow again.  Making leaf angels, or building mud men, are all too plausible as alternatives.

When the snow finally materializes, every figure and object in the final scene is dusted with joy.  Although this is not a look-and-find book, the final picture calls to mind the work of Richard Scarry, Brita Teckentrup, Marianne Dubuc, and Suzanne Rotraut Berner, working in the European tradition of the wimmelbuch.  Even without searching for specific items, readers will spend a long time noticing them.  Two monkeys play with a traffic cone. A mom takes a picture of a firefighter high fiving a child. Clowns entertain with balloon animals. By this point in the story, it’s evident that the boy’s priorities are not misplaced.  Snow is still the context for winter, even if it only arrives on the pages of a book.