Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner, ill. Mark Buehner

I know you’re all desperate for spring out there, but winter’s not done with you yet! With that in mind, we tackle what may well be the most famous snowman-related picture book outside of the Raymond Briggs classic. I introduce Kate to a title that has remained WELL in print since its publication back in 2002. For those of you peeved that we don’t know how to pronounce the Buehners’ last name, I would like to point out that I did go to Teachingbooks.net and they did NOT provide a pronunciation guide to that name on either one of them. On this show, Kate provides fun snowmen-related facts, we are sad not to see any curling, and we marvel at how good Buehner is at figuring out where the lights are coming from in these nighttime sequences.

Please note that this book was suggested to us by Terri Smith.

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, Audible, Amazon Music, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

I’m ashamed to know this, but while this is definitely the commercial I watched many times over, I can tell that this version has been abbreviated to cut out the bridge. I call foul. I am also a tiny bit unnerved by how accurate my memory has been on this song:

If you are curious about that Caralyn Buehner interview with Voyage Utah I mention on the show, you can find the full text here.

The first thing Kate would like to point out to you, is how misleading this cover illustration is. According to the text, the snowmen looks pretty ragged and rundown during the day due to their nighttime proclivities (think The Twelve Dancing Princesses but chillier and, uh, without feet). Here, however, they look downright chipper.

Ice cold or not, if these snowmen are drinking cocoa then one cannot help but begin to worry about what their insides are starting to look like. ew.

The text tells us that this cocoa is “made by snowman mothers”. This proceeded to send Kate down a rabbit hole of what precisely snowman relations look like to some extent.

Correct us if we’re wrong but this feels like a crime.

It’s an interesting question. The X’s on this snowman’s eyes would seem to indicate his untimely demise. That’s how cartoons would take it anyway. Can we simply assume that he’s, uh, merely unconscious? Difficult to say.

Trust me, Buehners. Kate was already finding these things long before we got to your publication page notice.

Kate Recommends: Our feature in the Evanston Roundtable is entitled Curated read-aloud recs from kid lit experts and is worth seeking out.

Betsy Recommends: The Rabbit hOle , because I am now on its Board of Directors!

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate