The Snow Man

The mother-son team (Oil) create a wry, poignant picture book biography about a reclusive man—billy barr, an author’s note reveals—who lives in a cabin on a snowy mountain and, with nothing else to do, becomes a scientific researcher. “He propped up an old freezer door to collect the snow, then stuck a ruler in it.” In naif-style paintings, Jeanette Winter shows the bearded, pale-skinned man standing in the snow, writing in a small notebook as forest animals look on. After decades of keeping measurements and records—the date of the first wildflower blooms and the arrival of migratory birds, among others—he begins to realize that there’s less snow falling than before, and that it arrives later and disappears earlier. The local climate change researcher he shares this information with is astonished by the encyclopedia of information assembled by this lone man—who is, Jonah Winter says, still living on the mountain, still measuring snow. With only his powers of observation and the quiet afforded him by isolated circumstances, he makes a significant scientific discovery. The idea that revelatory research can still occur both outside the confines of a laboratory and via simple, consistent noticing is a powerful and inspiring revelation. Ages up to 8. (Oct.)