Diane Keyes' Spirit of the Snowpeople Is Pleasant But Overly Didactic

Yesterday, I looked out the window to see a stinging blast of snow pelting the ground. The shower was brief, and the flakes melted before the ground could be coated. But it’s a sure sign that winter is on the way, and it may soon be time to go outside and create some snowmen. Or snowwomen and snowchildren. Snowpeople.

In Spirit of the Snowpeople, written by Diane Keyes and illustrated by Helen Stevens, building snowpeople is what the citizens of one idyllic town do best. They lead a simple life during this time when “the world was a gentler place” they are attuned to the rhythms of nature, blissfully surrounded by wildlife, and they present one another with homemade or homegrown gifts.

One day, to relieve boredom and demonstrate their creativity, they begin to sculpt people out of the snow and get to be so good at it that Snowpeople Lake becomes a tourist attraction and people come from far and wide to see the remarkable public art project. The villagers, instead of using this as an opportunity to cash in, are generous to the visitors, distributing clothes to them and being generally extremely hospitable. However, as the statues begin to melt, rumblings of discontent begin. The visitors are displeased. What can be done?

Stevens’ illustrations are pleasant, with a natural-looking tone to them, except when she poses the townsfolks’ snowpeople in improbable positions. The text is fairly simple, with just a sentence or two per page. It’s less of a Christmas story than a general winter story, but of course, snowmen have become easily associated with Christmas. The story is enjoyable enough, but it gets really preachy toward the end as the visitors receive a lecture on the value of helping one another, with a crash course on the water cycle to boot.

Spirit of the Snowpeople has a good message about the importance of working together, but its overly didactic tone makes it a tad dreary, and the villagers’ worshipful attitudes toward nature might rub some the wrong way. An interesting read, but hardly the best snowman story out there.