Review; Looking for Snow Fleas and Other Mysteries

Review of Looking for Snow Fleas and Other Mysteries,
(Complete with activities for finding and exploring them)
by Diane Dawber, Borealis Press, Oct, 08, $12.95

For a child, a good book is when a lot of things come together; text, pictures, something challenging but fun to puzzle out and a way to take it with you and walk around with it in your head.

Snow Fleas is all that and more, the latest in a highly-successful line of books to inspire children by a writer who understands children better than they understand themselves. She is absolutely mesmerizing in person when she reads from her series of children’s poetry.

There is not a sound in the room while she reads but then all hands go up and the talk just flies when she begins to ask questions about what they think. From such interaction with children, Dawber has written directly to their deepest interests.

What makes this book particularly special, is not only twenty appealing sound poems but questions and activities to go along with each. While it would be ideal for classroom use, a parent would have a wonderful time going through it together with their own child.

A note about the activities - they are exceptionally ingenious, the sort of thing that doesn’t take special materials or situations: “Make up a script of sounds that would tell someone a race is going on…” or ‘Make a toe-testing event.” Usually very simple, suitable for any age, but imminently doable, or as the headline says, ‘Something Fun to Do!’

The bright pen and ink watercolour drawings continue the fun, especially the dogs on ice featured on page 44.  And then, of course, there are the snow fleas themselves, an actual phenomena of nature, though not actually as depicted here, with purple faces, antennae, and tails like sprung slinkies.

Yes, if my own three children were not grown, I would’ve bought every single one of Dawber’s books and used them till they wore out.