Penguins, Snowmen and Bears ... Oh My!

We like holiday books a lot around here but we also love seasonal books. We get to read about snow, ice skating and arctic animals. Here are three books from our collection that we tend to pull out year round.

One of everyone's favorite cold climate animals are penguins and what could be a more inviting title than Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere!. Bob Barner has written and illustrated (with cut and torn paper) this fact-filled and cute book. We learn about penguin habitats, coloring and parenting habits. The last pages of the book have illustrations of each species of penguin - 17 in all. Z prefers the Macaroni penguin while I like the Little Blue from New Zealand. The strangest part of this book is the "Penguin Puzzler" section that answers questions like "What do penguins say?" and "What do penguins eat?" -- and if your young child ever wondered, "Who eats penguins?". It's all science, kids.

The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll and illustrated by Jeni Bassett is a book about hard work and teamwork. The young mice of Mouseville find out about a town snowman contest and each sets out to make the biggest snowman. Two different mice work very hard only to find out that they each made the same size snowman. They decide to work together instead and improve their chances of winning. So they roll all the parts of their own snowmen together to make one huge snow guy and they win the town prize. Yay!

Our most recently acquired winter book is the adorable The Snow Bear. Written by Miriam Moss and illustrated by Maggie Kneen, this is about a young bear who gets separated from his mother and needs someone to comfort him so he decides to build a mother out of snow. Different arctic animals like Musk Ox, Snow Goose and Moose come to help the little bear. Eventually the snow mother bear is done and the baby cuddles up to it and sleeps. In the morning, he wakes up and finds that his real mother has snuggled in next to him and all is well in the arctic forest.

Hoping to wake up to snow in the morning,
K and Z


Buy Penguins, Penguins Everywhere, The Biggest Snowman Ever and The Snow Bear on Amazon or find them at your local library.