The Snowball Fight
by Beth Ferry; illus. by Tom Lichtenheld
Preschool, Primary    Clarion/HarperCollins    48 pp.
11/25    9780063327078    $19.99

“Flurries hurry, floating down, / dusting, coating frozen ground. // Drifting flakes fall faster, faster, / turning things to alabaster.” These impressionistic opening lines accompany stark illustrations of two facing houses and the ground between them, covered in white and outlined in pencil against the watercolor blue sky. When the snow finally stops, a child emerges from each house: “YAY! HOORAY! It’s a Snow Day!” From here Ferry’s poetic text turns into a lively, rhyming instruction manual for proper fort building before an epic snowball fight ensues. (“‘Ha! Ya missed me…by A LOT!’ // It looks so easy. // But it’s not.”) In this exuberant picture book by frequent collaborators (recently The Umbrella, rev. 5/23), Lichtenheld’s spirited illustrations play effortlessly off Ferry’s verses. With the simple setting firmly established, the art focuses our attention on the characters’ expressions and activities, occasionally zooming in for dramatic effect, e.g., on the kids’ wary faces when one of the forts must be abandoned due to wind-blown snow. But such obstacles are no match for inspiration, which leads to sledding and then snow angels before the two content compatriots head inside for cookies and hot cocoa with marshmallows, the latter of which reminds them of one more snow creation to go back out and build before the day is finished. “YAY! HOORAY! / What a Snow Day!” indeed.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.