>Dutch Courage?

by Roger Sutton
Dec 09, 2008 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>I mentioned over on Facebook showing one of my favorite Christmas movies, The Snowman, based on Raymond Briggs's book, to the little Dutch kids from downstairs. One is two and the other four and they both seem to enjoy the film (or maybe it's just that hypno-glaze the Snowman himself demonstrates when he watches TV for the first time). But Elizabeth said, "But the snowman dies! Were the kids ok? I've heard that used as the 'difference between Americans and Europeans' argument. We have Frosty, who comes back to life. Their snowman dies."

They seemed okay--when the boy in the movie opens the door into the sunny morning to greet his friend, the four-year-old said "he melted." She also said "it was all a dream," so maybe she's just a realist by nature. I'm guessing she doesn't understand enough about death to see melting as possibly analogous.  Has anyone else experience with sharing this movie with young kids?
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Brenda Bowen

>Don't you love that gravelly voice of Raymond Briggs at the beginning of the film? (Roger -- correct me if it's not Raymond Briggs.) My daughter, now 15 and apparently well-adjusted, watched The Snowman countless times as a very young child and understood that the snowman melted. It was the Mary Martin Peter Pan that devastated her.

Posted : Dec 14, 2008 04:41

Roger Sutton

>Aled Jones did make a recording of the solo, but the singer in the original soundtrack is Peter Auty.

Posted : Dec 14, 2008 05:58

Anonymous

>The boy who sang The Snowman is Aled Jones, now in his 30s. In the early 90s he dated the housemate of my then-boyfriend and it was quite bizarre when he told me, when refering to bosoms, that "more than a handful is a waste". I couldn't quite wrap my mind round the fact that he was once the boy with the angelic voice.

Posted : Dec 14, 2008 05:46

Anonymous

>I have never seen the movie of Watership Down, though I read the book to my son when he was about 10. He wasn't scared of it. I always called him Hlao Roo after that. As for the Snowman, my 2nd graders have watched it and with no tears!

Posted : Dec 12, 2008 11:16

Anonymous

>I too was haunted for years as a child by the field of blood in Watership Down. That's still all I remember of the movie.

But then, I was also deeply disturbed by the animated version of the Phantom Tollbooth, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I could bring myself to read it. Go figure.

Posted : Dec 12, 2008 09:13

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