What makes a kid want to read? The answer to that breaks down due to their age and sex. Girls tend to read much quicker and advance at younger ages. Boys are apparently made of snips, snails, puppy dog tails and fart jokes or gas euphemisms. The Snowman Code is one of the cutest chapter books for elementary age kids we’ve read this year. Not only is it a good book, it’s one that will be effortless to read for children in elementary school. These are the readers who are able to graduate to chapter books, but might need a nudge to boost their confidence to get to books that look like The Snowman Code.
Aesthetically, The Snowman Code is tactile catnip. The embossed, glossy title is the color of an iceberg near Antarctica. The string of lights that are in the background, as well as, the street light and the snow, seems to pop off of the page. When young readers touch The Snowman Code they’ll feel something. It’s surface isn’t rough, but it isn’t smooth like other books. It almost feels like 2000-grit sandpaper. I know. In theory, sandpaper is not something that you want to rub your fingers over. However, when it’s really fine, so fine that it’s almost immeasurable in its coarseness, it’s a pleasure to feel. Really, touch the cover of The Snowman Code and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The illustration on the cover also helps. There’s a large, common-looking, white snowman hugging a little girl, on the front. The back cover has a Sherlock Holmes-esque snowman with a dog, happily gazing at the two. In the back is a major metropolitan area. It’s not immediately clear where it takes place, but there’s a large Ferris wheel and multiple dozens of skyscrapers. The cover assures boy readers that it’s a fanciful story that involves a real snowman and is set in modern day times. To get to the heart of reluctant boy readers it helps to have the story take place, or at least start, in a contemporary setting.
The Snowman Code got that memo. Blessing is a smart elementary school girl who is the one on the cover. In short order we discover that she hasn’t been to school in months due to bullying and that her mother is sick. I had a pang or two of concern when the book quickly jumped into those details. The cover sells The Snowman Code as a warm, fun story about a girl and a friendly snowman. If it’s not fun this is going to be a challenge to get any young reader to Da Vinci this code.
Rest easy young reader, those details are disclosed, but before you can say Seasonal Affective Disorder, The Snowman Code gets on with the fun. Because Blessing is so smart, and has great handwriting, she’s forged a note to her school. It was from her ‘mother’ stating that they’re moving to Australia to start a kangaroo preserve. Her mother is able to care for herself; she just has SAD because the winter has been going on so long. During the days she goes to the movies, walks about town and tries to avoid the three bullies when school isn’t in session.
This is the longest winter in decades and everybody in London is getting tired of it. One day when Blessing is walking through the park she thinks that she sees a snowman move. No, she knows that she just saw a snowman move, so she starts asking it questions. After the sixth question the snowman comes to life and starts talking with her. It turns out that the snowman has a Snowman Code that they live their lives by. After being mandated to speak to someone after six attempts is the gateway to frozen-borne conversation. There are many other codes that Albert Framlington, later called just Albert-unless Blessing is cross with him. The two use these codes to guide their adventures.
The 500-lb gorilla in the story, what happens when a snowman melts is deftly handled and is central towards young readers buying into the narrative. The snowman has been around since the dawn of time. They come to life when they’re built, are nocturnal, can be woken up during the day-but they’ll be sleepy, and they do melt. When they melt they simply follow the water cycle. They evaporate, the water vapor goes into the clouds, the clouds are blown around the world where they’ll eventually turn back into precipitation.
A snowman in London will melt and become a new snowman in a different country next winter. However, if the cold season lasts too long or too short, then their migration habits will change. As Albert and Blessing’s friendship grows they discover more about each other. He helps her with the three bullies. She realizes that he once had a true love, but that they haven’t seen one another in hundreds of years. Her mother gets taken to a hospital, and as a result, she has to go to a foster home. All of this while the longest winter in London stretches into April, but Albert, and his long-lost love, Clementine might just be able to solve.
This is not a global warming story. It’s not another story about a foster home kid looking for their parents. It’s not a mopey, depressing story, despite it having a wallop of a heart-tugging punch in the final 25%. That aspect is more of an emotional reward, than an obligatory ebb and flow to an elementary school novel. Readers will want to see the cause and effect, followed by the eventual payoff that will reward ages seven through 11.
It accomplishes this through its direct dialogue that’s completely believable, despite being one that most audiences will associate with a stereotypical name. That name, the F-word, which shall not be named here, is played for laughs when the duo first meets. Their conversations are snappy, short and fun to read. The bigger, emotion pieces, are deftly established and easy to follow. You can’t help but be entertained. It will charm reluctant readers. It will do exactly what elementary ages who already like to read want it to do. Resistance is futile. This is potentially world-building fiction with illustrations to boot.
The Snowman Code is by Simon Stephenson with illustrations by Reggie Brown and is available on Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
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