Poetry Books about Winter

It's still winter--that's for sure. Here are some short reviews of poetry books about winter activities and winter weather...in case you're looking for some poems about the coldest season to share with children.

Winter Eyes
Written & illustrated by Douglas Florian
Greenwillow, 1999

Winter Eyes is one of my favorite Douglas Florian books. It was also a poetry favorite in my elementary school library. The collection contains twenty-eight poems about all kinds of wintertime subjects—sledding, icicles, ice fishing, animal tracks in the snow, sugaring time, ice skating, animals in underground burrows, and cabin fever. It includes concrete and list poems. Most of the poems are short, rhyming, rhythmic..

The first poem in the book, Winter Eyes, begins this way:

Look at winter
With winter eyes,
As smoke curls from rooftops
To clear cobalt skies.


In The Winter Sun, Florian personifies the star of our solar system. The sun’s “a grumpy guy” who “doesn’t speak.”

He hovers near the naked trees,
His blanket from the sky’s big freeze,
And barely dares to lift his head
Before he’s ordered back to bed.

Winter Eyes is a poetry book that's fun reading from cover to cover.

Winter: An Alphabet Acrostic
Written by Steven Schnur
Illustrated by Leslie Evans

This is the last in Schnur’s series of seasonal acrostic books. Both Schnur's poems and Evans' hand-colored linoleum block print illustrations evoke the chill of winter out of doors and the warmth and coziness of sitting by a fire or snuggling on a couch under a blanket indoors in winter. The book opens with a poem about the beginning of a new day:

At dawn, a thick
White frost covers the lawn
As the steaming
Kettle whistles
Everyone up.

Outside it’s C-O-L-D!

Crystals
Of ice as delicate as
Lace ring the
Duck pond.

The poems gives readers a good overview of the winter season.There are acrostics about deer in an orchard, a flurry of snowflakes, a father gathering kindling, hibernating animals, pine trees in moonlight, ice skating, and boiling vats of maple sap. The collection closes with a few poems about the end of winter and coming of spring.

You can view three of the interior illustrations from the book here.

Winter Poems

Selected by Barbara Rogasky

Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

You can read my 2007 review of Winter Poems here: POETRY FRIDAY: Winter in Poems & Paintings

Snow, Snow: Winter Poems for Children
Written by Jane Yolen
Photographs by Jason Stemple

Pictures of snow that her son Jason Stemple took in Colorado served as Yolen’s inspiration for the thirteen poems in this book. The collection begins with the poem What’s Left of Fall and a picture of fallen leaves covered with snow crystals. Here are the first six lines of the poem:

Crisp leaf litter
Under snowy glitter;

Crumpled and brown
Letters thrown down;

The last bit of shade
From autumn’s parade

Subjects of other poems in the book include a skiing, snow on the trees, a snowmobile, footprints in the snow, and a river wrapped in “ermine robes.”

Snow, Snow closes with A Cold Finger—the finger being the “mittenless” branch of a tree that is pointing the way toward spring.

Once Upon Ice and Other Frozen Poems
Selected by Jane Yolen
Photographs by Jason Stemple

For this anthology, Jane Yolen asked a number of poets “to look at Jason Stemple’s eerily wonderful photographs of ice formations and write whatever the photos inspired." Poets whose works you’ll find in this book include Kathi Appelt, X. J. Kennedy, Mary Ann Hoberman, Ann Turner, Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Nancy Willard, and Jane Yolen. The poems are written in a variety of styles. Some are filled with imagery; some are rhythmic and rhyming—like Mary Ann Hoberman’s poem Ice Cycle:

I’ve always thought it rather nice
That water freezes into ice.
I’m also pleased that it is true
That ice melts back to water too.
But even so I find it strange
The way that ice and water change
And how a single water drop
Can fathom when it’s time to stop
Its downward drip and go ahead
And start an icicle instead.

Jason Stemple's photographs are sure to send chills down readers' spines. The book is a lovely pairing of poetry and pictures.

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At Political Verses, I have a kind of anti-valentine poem titled Look at the Man: A Poem Explaining Why Women with Mates Gain Weight.

At Blue Rose Girls, I have a humorous poem by Ogden Nash titled Common Cold.

Lee Wind has the Poetry Friday Roundup at I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read?

Winter Picture Books in Verse

The following books have rhyming texts and would be wonderful for reading to very young children at this time of year. They are fine ways to introduce little listeners to rhyming words and rhythmic language.

SNOWY, BLOWY WINTER
Written by Bob Raczka
Illustrated by Judy Stead
Albert Whitman & Company, 2008

Raczka’s zippy text and Stead’s bold and colorful illustrations take us through the chill and sights of winter days and nights and common seasonal activities—icicles hanging from eaves, snow swirling through the air, sliding down hills, making snow angels, shoveling, making a snowman, feeding birds. They also take us through the warm indoor happenings—sipping hot cocoa, having a hot bath, reading by the fire, baking cookies.


This is a picture book where the pictures help to “tell” readers what the spare text doesn’t. Some pages have no words. The other pages have just one, two, or three words—with the exception of the last two pages. The final page includes all the “fun” words Raczka used to describe Snowy, Blowy Winter. This would certainly be an enjoyable book to share with youngsters and could be used as a springboard for having them add their own words to describe winter.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

Snowy,
blowy,
windows are glowy.

Strappy,
zippery,
icy and slippery.

Angels are lovely.
Sidewalks are shovely.

The back matter of the book has a recipe for “Snowy, Blowy Ice Cream.”

MILLIONS OF SNOWFLAKES
Written by Mary McKenna Siddals
Illustrated by Elizabeth Sayles
Clarion, 1998

This small book is perfect for lap reading. It is also a counting book for little ones just beginning to learn about numbers.

The book begins…

One little snowflake
falls on my nose.
It makes me shiver
from my head to my toes.


Two little snowflakes
get in my eyes.
Blink! Blink!
What a surprise!

And so the text goes—from a child counting two snowflakes to counting three and four and five snowflakes and then to looking at snow all around her:

Snow on the house.
Snow on the tree.
Snow on the grounds.
Snow on me!
Millions of snowflakes in my hair.
Snowflakes falling everywhere!

Sayles’ illustrations work perfectly with Siddals’ text. The first picture is a small square surrounded by a thick white border. As the book progresses, the pictures get larger and larger until the end of the book. Then the borders are gone and the illustrations fill up the pages—just as the child’s world is filling up with snow.

Sayles’ illustrations are uncluttered and spare. The focus of the pictures is the snowflakes and a young Asian child with her dog enjoying the falling—and fallen—snow. The illustrations have warm, purplish and or peach backgrounds. This is a lovely little winter book to share with a very young child.

TRACKS IN THE SNOW
Written & illustrated by Wong Herbert Yee
Henry Holt, 2003

Tracks in the Snow is another small picture book—just right for lap reading. It has more text than the previous two books that I reviewed here. In this book, a young Asian girl sees some mysterious tracks in the snow and wonders what animal might have made them. She goes looking. She skips around the old oak tree, walks by the frozen pond, crosses a snowy bridge, peeks under a log, tramps up a hill. She finally realizes that it was she who left the tracks. She made them the day before when she was out playing in the snow.

The book has a lovely rhythmic text that is written in quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ABCB—except for the refrain.

The Refrain:
Tracks in the snow.
Tracks in the snow.
Who made the tracks?
Where do they go?

Here’s another excerpt from the book. In this quatrain the child is thinking to herself and trying to solve the mystery of who made the tracks in the snow:

It could have been a duck,
But I think they’ve gone away.
I know it’s not a woodchuck;
They sleep all night and day.

Wong Herbert Yee’s illustrations done in Prismacolors on Arches watercolor paper have a soft, blurry look. They are set against a white background and capture the feel of a wintery country world blanketed with snow. This quiet picture book is a keeper!

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At Blue Rose Girls, I have a special Elizabeth Alexander post that includes links to her inaugural poem Praisesong for the Day and to videos of her poetry reading at the inauguration, Jeffrey Brown’s conversation with her on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and her appearance on The Colbert Report.

Laura Salas has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week.