Snow Inside the House

The weather outside is frightful, but what if the flakes blew indoors? A child muses about just such a meteorological event in this peppy picture book. Fun galore--sledding down the snow-covered stairs, skating a figure eight on a frozen bathtub, battling indoor snowball fights and playing with a pet penguin--is what one girl imagines with snow inside the house. One spread, ""Snowmen in the living room,/ one in every chair..../ Snowball fights on Monday nights/ while Daddy's sitting there,"" shows a living room filled with seated snowpeople while Daddy, encased in an ice cube, watches football on an icicle-coated TV set. But when the young protagonist snuggles into a warm and cozy bed at night, she reasons that snow is better left outdoors. Diviny's rhyming text has a jaunty tone and Rocco's cartoonish, wild-faced characters often sport protruding eyeballs (which resemble snowballs) and saw-like teeth. Text that rolls around the frenetic action on each spread adds zing to the proceedings. Diviny and Rocco clearly share children's enthusiasm: Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! Ages 4-8. (Feb.)