the Snowman

This book, a wordless (yes) children's Christmas classic from Raymond Briggs, is another that I feel a bit iffy about writing a blog post about, not because it's so short (I've read a few short things on here) but because it has literally no words in the actual content of the book. But alas, I find myself a month on from the last post on here, without having finished any more actual substantive books - this is largely because of the ongoing writing project I mentioned in my previous post, as well as having started back at uni (two jobs, a part-time postgraduate degree, several churchy or extracurricular or activism-ish endeavours, a social life, eating and sleeping and also enjoying TV - this combination does not allow a huge amount of time for recreational reading, sadly), and also because the one substantive book I was recently getting more of a groove into (Spinoza's Ethics, if you must know, which makes the following anecdotal excuse for postlessness quite roundly ironic) was in a bag of mine which was stolen by a drug dealer who crashed a party I was at in Manchester a couple of weeks ago.*

   So as an excuse for a post, and also because despite the immense cultural impact of this particular snowman I had somehow never seen or read it, I seized the opportunity (it's a birthday present for my sister, and being a book made of child-style cardboard, was able to be pre-read without a trace) - and you know what, it's pretty good. The whole story is told through the medium of pencil crayon drawings evocative of 1970s childhood nostalgia - all toast and wellies and fireplaces, when winters were genuinely snowy and snow was genuinely magical, when you had easy access to actual lumps of coal with which to demark facial features and buttons upon any snowmen built, when, let's face it, kids actually built snowmen.** Simpler times. The Good Old Days. Whatever.

   The actual story is as follows [SPOILERS]: boy builds snowman, boy goes to bed, boy wakes up in the night to see snowman moving about, boy invites magically-living snowman inside, shows it a variety of hot (oh no!) and cold (oh yes!) and funny (haha!) items therein, boy is then led outside by snowman - who seizes the boys hand and flies off dangerously into the night, in what can either be taken as a bizarre exploratory abduction or a glorious flight of youthful imagination (probably the latter), snowman returns boy home, boy goes back to bed, can't sleep due to excitement about the occurrence, goes outside at sunrise to discover a melted snowman.

   For what it is, a wordless book of pure nostalgic imagination, it is actually brilliant - its status as a classic should probably attest to that. There's a purity in its simplicity, it's the kind of story that a small child who can't quite confidently read yet could fully engage with and be absolutely spellbound by, and for that, big thumbs up. Despite how flippant and digressive this post has been (aren't they all though), don't think I don't know this book would be a perfect wintertime delight for kids - indeed, one to stoke and spark their love of both alternative methods of storytelling and old-school play, two of the finest imagination-pumps in existence.

On that note, if you're a six-year-old or younger reading this, go outside!***

* Upon realising this, I was annoyed about losing the book but also amused that such an item had been, if only as part of a bag-to-chuck-other-stolen-stuff-in type deal, stolen, and wondered if its new owner would get round to seeing what Baruch de Spinoza had to say about God and metaphysics and inner peace and whatnot. Whatever the case, it turned up stashed in a cupboard the day after, and is still in Manchester. The whole debacle has made me slightly wary of getting stuck into any other of the several interesting books I currently have on the go, lest they meet a similar fate. Key lessons here are probably not to leave your bag in the kitchen of a party where there are people you don't know, as some of them may turn out to be party-crashing super-shifty dealers (we weren't to know), but also probably don't take philosophy books to those kinds of parties. Even if it's only for reading on the lonely train ride home.

** I mean, they still do, but have you seen them? Calvin and Hobbes would despair. Kids these days get cold hands after constructing a cylindrical lump any taller than a foot or two, whinge out and finish quickly by sticking a carrot, a twig, two small stones and a flatcap on said lump, and whisk back inside to warm their fingers up on a games console. I blame global warming - there's just not enough snow to make it worthwhile anymore.

*** Or read a book!