WINTER SNOW

A toddler encounters a variety of winter phenomena and tells readers about wearing a hat and scarf, building a snowman and riding on a sled.

The layout follows a set pattern throughout. The left-hand page shows an object or objects against a white background, and the right-hand page puts the object in question in context. Stand-alone snowballs on the left are paired with the toddler throwing them on the right, and a birdfeeder to the left is next to a close-up of a bird eating on the right. Some of the isolated objects, such as a bare branch, some falling snow and an old-fashioned sled, are very hard to recognize in their decontextualized state and look stark and lonely against the white background. It is odd that a book dubbed Winter Snow has only three scenes involving the stuff. Slegers’ cartoon toddler clad in bright colors and wearing a perpetually crooked smile is friendly, but the Caucasian tyke's presence is not enough to fill out the sparse pages. There is a fine line in board books between simple and slight.

Unlike other books by Slegers, this offering is a little slim. (Board book. 1-3)