Samson in the Snow

Stead (Ideas Are All Around) returns to themes he’s made his own: friendship, acceptance, and love for small, ordinary objects that most people overlook. Together, his observations form a gentle theology. Samson is a mammoth who wears an expression of furry concern. He’s first seen weeding his dandelion patch. (Aren’t dandelions weeds? Not to Samson.) A red bird appears: “Would you mind if I took some flowers for a friend?” the bird asks. “He is having a bad day.” Samson hears this wistfully: “He wondered what it would be like to have a friend.” When a blizzard descends, Samson thinks immediately of the bird, his concern etched in a wordless vision of the tiny animal sprawled in the snow, and sets out to rescue her. Samson trudges over broad, snowy plains, eventually finding a mouse—the very friend, it emerges, for whom the flowers were intended. Together they find the bird, not a moment too soon. The contrast between the very large and the very small contributes to the story’s magic, and so does Samson, a hero who is tender, patient, and loyal. Ages 4–8. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (Sept.)