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Over and Under the Snow



Over and Under the Snow
by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
Chronicle, 2011. Unpaged. Nonfiction.

A father and daughter skiing through the woods see the serene surface of the snow, but underneath a winter animal community thrives. Shrews, mice, and voles run in tunnels beneath the snow and sleep in nests of moss, leaves, feathers, and fur. Beavers huddle for warmth in their snow-covered lodges eating the shoots and aspen bark, and bears and bullfrogs hibernate. Christopher Neal's wintry colors and slate-clean lines picture perfectly the over and under world of wintertime, culminating in our little girl in her red longjohn pajamas, under the covers, asleep. A beautiful, quiet, evocative picture of a wintry world.

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