SNOW BOOKS:

Jack Ezra Keats, The Snowy Day, Puffin £3.99 2+

Hans Christian Andersen/PJ Lynch The Snow Queen, Andersen £6.99 5+

Kazuno Kohara, Jack Frost, Macmillan £10.99 3+

Snow and ice may close schools and disrupt work, but they are such great themes for children’s writers that it sometimes seems as if no classic adventure can be without the white stuff. Who can forget the enchanted sparkle of Narnia under the White Witch? What about Lyra’s fantastic voyage on the back of the giant white armoured bear in Northern Lights, or the Fellowship of the Ring struggling doughtily up Mount Caradhras? Susan Cooper’s great fantasy sequence, The Dark is Rising starts with snow, as does The Box of Delights, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the  marvellously spooky classic (recently reprinted by Orion)The Giant Under the Snow by John Gordon. Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen ends in ice and snow, which can be friend or foe, frightening or comforting, depending on whether you are hunter or hunted. We all have our favourite snowy passages in children’s books – what’s yours?

It isn’t just novels that benefit from what Coleridge called “the secret ministry of ice”. Something as unsullied as a blank page is, inevitably, a great boon to picture book artists, too. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats isn’t as well known here as in its native America. A little boy wakes up in the city “to a world of snowy white.” The silence, purity and thrilling transformation of all that is familiar are vividly evoked in brilliant colours. Peter (who wears a red pointed hood, but who is black) revels in all the things he can suddenly do, as a series of utterly inspired double-page spreads which include collages and cut-outs of snowflakes then proceeds to show.  Like the artist himself, the boy can draw lines, make snow angels and finally, of course, have a snowball fight with friends. When he tries to bring a snowball back in his pocket, it melts – but more snow, and fresh joy, comes the next day. A Snowy Day, a classic since its publication in 1963, is a must-have for 2+.

Hans Andersen’s The Snow Queen is given ravishing pictures by PJ Lynch that rival Arthur Rackham’s for detail, drama and psychological insight. We all know the story, beautifully retold here for 5+. The Snow Queen’s kidnap of little Kay swirls with the beating wings of her great white birds, but the truth about the destructive nature of extreme cold is shown on the next page, with Kay lying blackened and frozen almost to death. Lynch’s pictures of the Queen beckoning Kay from out of a swarm of snowflakes, and sitting in frozen majesty on her throne on a lake of ice are haunting, but brave Gerda’s love, faith and warmth make this a tale of sheer delight. Hurrah to see it back in print after a long absence!

Jack Frost, a new book by Kazuno Kohara, has an elegant economy of illustration and a touching tale for 3+. A bored, lonely boy lives alone with his dog. All his friends are hibernating, but then it snows and – as Kohara’s screen-prints reverse from brown against grey to become white shapes against blue – Jack Frost, dressed like a bleached jester, teases them. Boy and dog chase him, and when the mischievous, spiky Jack jumps over the pond to escape, they skate, sledge and throw snowballs in pursuit. Jack becomes the boy’s playmate for as long nothing warm is mentioned. But one day the boy sees a snowdrop, and the boy says “it’s almost spring....”If only.