White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt

Book size about 9 by 10 1/2 inches with some 33 pages. Please check out my Facebook page if you get a chance, I post a lot of fun stuff there.Hardcover.

Or even better, walk on down to your local independent bookseller and support them. If you’re looking to buy any of them you can click on the the links and cover photos in each post, OR you can click on the little box over there on the right that says “ amelie’s bookshop (buy the books)” and it will take you to my Amazon Affiliate store- you’re buying them as you normally would through Amazon, except that I get a teeny tiny commission. Recommendations, really, for which I am not compensated.

These aren’t book reviews, per se, but more profiles of the really, really good ones (I don’t bother with ones that aren’t awesome). Sometimes these vintage stories are just what we need on a cold day, no? One flake, two flakes, five, eight, ten, and suddenly the air was filled with soft powdery snowflakes, whispering quietly as they sifted down.Įach scene is portrayed in pure throwback fashion: the farmer with his ubiquitous pipe and plaid flannels, the postman with his rubber galoshes, the policeman’s wife in her fabulous yellow dress at the wood cookstove trying to keep her husband from getting sick, the children with their toboggans with metal runners, and the beautifully quiet illustrations of snow blanketing the town’s rooftops. Then, just when no one was looking, it came. While the children watched the low gray sky, waiting for the first snowflakes to fall. Even the rabbits knew it, and scurried around in the dead leaves. The policeman said it felt like snow, and his wife said her big toe hurt, and that always meant snow. The book is full of scenes of small town life from the first snowfall to the last melt- the postman, the farmer, the policeman, the policeman’s wife, the children and the rabbits each respond to the different phases of winter. Alvin Tresselt’s lyrical White Snow Bright Snow is one of our favorite snowy day books. Today’s book was published in 1947, it’s an instant hit of nostalgia and good wholesome small-town wintertime fun. They’ve been chomping at the bit to go outside and play, though, and who can blame them? When it warms up just a titch, we’ll be all over it. It’s also been bitterly cold, and since my now seven-year-old has been sick, the kids have had to enjoy this snow from inside the windows. Honestly, though, we don’t seem to have that much snow on the ground, it’s just been crazy windy so any exposed spots are pretty clear.

It’s actually Lake Michigan, and I’m standing about 20 yards into the bay to take this picture. What kind of big barren wasteland of ice did you move to? But no, no it’s not a massive flat snowfield.

This is what it looks like outside right now.

White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt