Henry and Mudge Make a Splash in the Snow

The snow is finally melting here in Erie, Pennsylvania. It's been here such a long time, clogging up driveways, sloshing up shoes, freezing up fingers, that I'm not all that sorry to see it go. Except that I never built a snowman. It all comes, I suppose, of being in my mid-twenties and already more attracted to bundling up under blankets than wading through mounds of powdery chilliness, especially when my boots and Carhartts have vanished into the abyss of our attic. And not having any brothers around to stir me into action. Still, it would be nice to get in one snowman before all that white melts away into a rainbow of petals, even if it is just a miniature perched atop our picnic table.

In Henry and Mudge and the Snowman Plan, the nineteenth book featuring the lovable boy and dog pair, Henry's town is buried under a blizzard's worth of snow, so it's the perfect time to have a snowman-building contest. When he sees the sign announcing the competition in the park, Henry can hardly wait to get started on his creation. Of course, the event doesn't start for another few days, and he and his dad will need the time to think up an extra-imaginative sculpture...

Like Henry and Mudge and the Funny Lunch, this is a book in which Henry's dad contributes comic relief and assists his son in coming up with an unusual work of art. The appealing prose of Cynthia Rylant, author of the Poppleton and Mr. Putter and Tabby series, sparkles with brevity and wit. She gets us inside the heads of the main characters, particularly Mudge: "Mudge wagged his tail. He always wagged his tail when Henry said, 'Wow!' It meant excitement. And sometimes it meant dessert!"

Sucie Stevenson's illustrations are especially amusing here, from her depiction of Henry's father's exploits in the first section - Contest! - to her illustrations of all the different dogs at the park in the second section - At the Park - and the vast variety of snow sculptures in the third section - Snow Aliens. I particularly enjoyed the picture of a tiny girl in a fur-lined red coat holding a bunch of broccoli up to an inquiring Mudge and the fact that one of the contestants sculpts a life-size figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Henry and Mudge and the Snowman Plan is a funny story that's just right for a wintry sort of day, and it just might inspire its young - and slightly older - readers to go out and create a sculpture of their own while the snow is still on the ground.