title: A Snowflake Fell: Poems About Winter
author: Laura Whipple
description: PreSchool-Grade 3-Hori's delicate, ethereal pastel-and-watercolor illustrations will draw children into this magical book. Two dozen poets explore aspects of the season, from James Whitcomb Riley in "Winter Fancies" to Douglas Florian in "The Winter Tree." The Native American Taos people's story of winter as an old man appears in Nancy Wood's "Old Man Winter," and several poems are told from an animal's perspective, as in Marilyn Singer's energetic "Deer Mouse" ("-get busy/get done/get get get get/get out of here/run"). From cozy to dangerous, serious to humorous, the poems evoke the emotions and senses of the season, and will delight listeners and readers.<br /><i>Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI</i><br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  **CRASHING A BASH**
  
  
  
  
  
  The six hoverboards slipped among the trees with the lightning grace of
  playing cards thrown flat and spinning. The riders ducked and weaved among
  ice-heavy branches, laughing, knees bent and arms outstretched. In their wake
  glowed a crystal rain, tiny icicles shaken from the pine needles to fall
  behind, aflame with moonlight.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tally felt everything with an icy clarity: the brittle, freezing wind across
  her bare hands, the shifting gravities that pressed her feet against the
  hoverboard. She breathed in the forest, tendrils of pine coating her throat
  and tongue, thick as syrup.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cold air seemed to make sounds crisper: The loose tail of her dorm jacket
  cracked like a wind-whipped flag, her grippy shoes squeaked against the
  hoverboard surface with every turn. Fausto was pumping dance music straight
  through her skintenna, but that was silent to the world outside. Over its
  frantic beat Tally heard every twitch of her new monofilament-sheathed
  mu