The Snow Man
A True Story
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Meet the man living alone in the mountains whose hobby of measuring snowfall led to a global understanding of climate change in this nonfiction picture book from celebrated mother-son team Jonah and Jeanette Winter.
When billy barr came to the mountains as a young man, his only companions were a skunk and a pine marten. He needed something to fill the hours. So he began measuring the snow that fell. Day after day, and year after year, he measured.
As he grew older, he noticed something: the snow was disappearing. It arrived later, melted sooner, and there wasn’t as much of it. He shared his records with a local scientist, who shared them with other scientists, until his measurements were used by scientists all over the world studying climate change. Thanks to his curiosity, groundbreaking data was gathered that still helps us today!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The mother-son team (Oil) create a wry, poignant picture book biography about a reclusive man—billy barr, an author's note reveals—who lives in a cabin on a snowy mountain and, with nothing else to do, becomes a scientific researcher. "He propped up an old freezer door to collect the snow, then stuck a ruler in it." In naif-style paintings, Jeanette Winter shows the bearded, pale-skinned man standing in the snow, writing in a small notebook as forest animals look on. After decades of keeping measurements and records—the date of the first wildflower blooms and the arrival of migratory birds, among others—he begins to realize that there's less snow falling than before, and that it arrives later and disappears earlier. The local climate change researcher he shares this information with is astonished by the encyclopedia of information assembled by this lone man—who is, Jonah Winter says, still living on the mountain, still measuring snow. With only his powers of observation and the quiet afforded him by isolated circumstances, he makes a significant scientific discovery. The idea that revelatory research can still occur both outside the confines of a laboratory and via simple, consistent noticing is a powerful and inspiring revelation. Ages up to 8.
