Girl from the Snow Country (Children's Books from Around the World) - Softcover

Hidaka, Masako

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0916291936 ISBN 13: 9780916291938

Publisher: Kane Miller Book Pub, 1999

Synopsis

A little Japanese girl enjoys the falling snow as she makes snow bunnies and walks across the snowy fields with her mother to the village market.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, Japanese (translation)

From School Library Journal:

PreSchool-Grade 3 In the mountain village where Mi-chan lives with her mother, snow falls heavily. Mother and daughter tramp across the fields to market, where a kind flower-seller gives the little girl a branch of red berriesjust the thing for putting eyes on the ``snow-bunnies'' Mi-chan has made by sticking green-leaf ears into rounded clumps of snow. There are occasional visual inconsistencies in the otherwise attractive watercolors: children may wonder why the heavy winter snow that has fallen on camellia blossoms has not damaged them, and a tree described in the text as ``bare'' is covered with pink buds. The market women are wonderfully garbed and shaped, yet Mi-chan's mother in her heavy cloak has little definition except as a brown blob. The story is the sort that appeals to listeners of age three or four: an excursion with mother, a gift, and the wonderfully imaginative creation, artfully illustrated, of ``snow bunnies.'' Somewhat less successful than the illustrations, the text is so colloquial that it occasionally seems out of tune with the very Japanese illustrations, a fault perhaps of the translation rather than the original. Mi-chan, for example, tells the flower-seller, ``At home I made these snow bunnies,'' and when the berries are offered, the flower-seller says, ``Since you're so sweet, you can have them for free.'' Still, the simple story will please many children, and it is a pleasure to find an accessible story reflecting another culture. Dudley B. Carlson, Princeton Public Library, N.J.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kane Miller Book Pub
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0916291936
• ISBN 13: 9780916291938
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32