A little boy who loves building snowmen but doesn’t so much love seeing them melt imagines a magic snowman who “could stay with me all year!” They’d fly kites together, ride the roller coaster, watch the Fourth of July fireworks, camp out in the woods, etc. Caralyn Buehner’s rhyming four-line stanzas put boy and snowman together in a variety of situations that Mark Buehner’s bright, oil-over-acrylic paintings realize with mild whimsy. It is funny to see the snowman’s mittened hands holding up a jar of fireflies, and the spread of the boy burying the snowman in the sand at the beach will elicit chuckles. But this outing lacks the magic of the pair’s Snowmen at Night (2002) almost entirely, coming alive only on the very last page, which suggests that perhaps it’s time for this franchise to melt. (Picture book. 4-7)
