Snow, Uri Shulevitz
Snow, Uri Shulevitz
List: $1.99 | Sale: $1.40
Club: $0.99

Snow
(Caldecott Honor Book)

Author: Uri Shulevitz

Narrator: Sean Schemmel

Unabridged: 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/29/2009

Synopsis

Snow is a 1998 New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year and a 1999 Caldecott Honor Book.

"It's snowing, said boy with dog.
"It's only a snowflake," said grandfather with beard.

No one thinks one or two snowflakes will amount to anything. Not the man with the hat or the lady with the umbrella. Not even the television or the radio forecasters. But one boy and his dog have faith that the snow will amount to something spectacular, and when flakes start to swirl down on the city, they are also the only ones who know how to truly enjoy it.

Uri Shulevitz' playful depiction of a snowy day and the transformation of a city is perfectly captured in simple, poetic text and lively watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations.

About Uri Shulevitz

Uri Shulevitz (1935-2025) was a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and, unlike many children, never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled, as chronicled in his acclaimed memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. There Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books, and soon he and a friend started making their own. At thirteen, Shulevitz won first prize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris's 20th district. In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked a variety of jobs: an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk at Tel Aviv City Hall. He studied at the Teachers' Institute in Tel Aviv, where he took courses in literature, anatomy, and biology, and also studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum. At 24 he moved to New York City, where he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and drew illustrations for a publisher of Hebrew books. One day while talking on the telephone, he noticed that his doodles had a fresh and spontaneous look—different from his previous illustrations. This discovery was the beginning of Uri's new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room, his first book, published in 1963. Since then he has written and illustrated many celebrated children’s books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, written by Arthur Ransome. He has also earned three Caldecott Honors, for The Treasure, Snow and How I Learned Geography. His other books include One Monday Morning, Dawn, So Sleepy Story and many others. He also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books. Shulevitz’s final book, completed shortly before his death in New York City at age eighty-nine, is The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe, a narrative nonfiction account of the adventures of his father’s brother Yehiel, who ran away from home at age fifteen, journeyed through prewar Europe for a decade, and ended up a member of the Spanish Republican Army and then the Jewish Resistance in Vichy France.

About Sean Schemmel

Sean Schemmel is a voice actor whose work includes providing the voice of Goku in the English-language version of the Dragon Ball anime television shows and video games. He also provided voices in Speed Racer, Pokémon, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, among many other roles. He has narrated books including Justin Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad Says, Jack D. Ferraiolo’s Big Splash and, for Macmillan Young Listeners, Uri Shulevitz’s Caldecott Honor-winning Snow.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Calista on June 24, 2019

I think this book is wonderful. No one has a name, they have identifiers like ‘boy with dog’ and ‘man with hat’. There is a line per page, so this is a beginning story for children, but it didn’t feel beneath an older reader. It felt minimal like the snow. We see one flake in the air and then two an......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on November 26, 2010

Very enjoyable! I was enchanted with this book. It’s just lovely, and fun and whimsical. I loved the dog! It’s a very simple but very enjoyable story. The illustrations are fabulous. I didn’t at all need the Mother Goose characters participating; I think the story would have been better without them, b......more

Goodreads review by Ronyell on December 31, 2010

This is the actual first story that I have read from popular children’s illustrator Uri Shulevitz, aside from the popular book “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship.” “Snow” is a Caldecott Honor Book by Uri Shulevitz which is about a small boy wishing for snow in his small city. “Snow” might be......more

Goodreads review by Robert on May 09, 2014

**** Caldecott Honor (1999) **** A grey town turns into a wonderland for a boy and his imagination when it begins to snow. Simple and pleasant, but not very memorable.......more

Goodreads review by Luann on March 01, 2010

I really like Uri Shulevitz' quirky illustrations in this one. The snowflakes, while tiny, are perfectly visible. And Shulevitz' people are very fun. My favorite is "woman with umbrella." My favorite line in the book, when it continues to snow despite predictions on the radio and televion, is: "But......more

Quotes

“Pure enchantment from start to finish. Shulevitz uses text as spare as a December landscape to cast a spell of winter magic [and] works a bit of visual alchemy as the tale progresses.” —Starred, Publishers Weekly

“Outstanding . . . filled with humorous touches . . . Youngsters will joyfully join the boy in his winter-welcoming dance.” —Starred, School Library Journal

Awards

  • School Library Best Books of the Year
  • Golden Kite Award Winner
  • Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
  • Caldecott Honor Book
  • Booklist Editors' Choice
  • School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Charlotte Zolotow Award (Univ. of WI)
  • BCCB Blue Ribbon Award
  • ALA Notable Children's Books
  • The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
Add to Cart
Add to Wish List