'S No Time Like Snow Time: Snowmen at Night by Caralyn and Mark Buehner

It's not a new story. It's "Frosty the Snowman," and Raymond Brigg's wonderful, wordless The Snowman, and a jillion other snowman stories in which the child witnesses the snowman's nocturnal frolic which presages the ultimate meltdown. Carpe diem!

Caralyn and Mark Buehner's take on the sodden, sagging snowman saga is not to sadden over his demise but to assume that he's just weary from a nightime of snow fun. In Snowmen at Night Caralyn's jaunty verse is no brooding existential lament for the lost snow creation:

One windy day I made a snowman,
very round and tall.
The next day when I saw him,
He was not the same at all.

His hat had slipped, his arms drooped down,
he really looked a fright--
It made me start to wonder;
What do snowmen do at night?

Mark Buehner's solid and gleeful snowmen congregate in the moonlit park to drink cold cocoa from frosty mugs made by snow mothers, to race, and skate, and play snow baseball with a broom for a bat and snowballs for baseballs. And when the game is done, the leftovers are perfect for "the world's best snowball fight." Then on tubes and tobaggans and red racer sleds they take wild slides down the hill until at last the sleepy snowmen pack it up and head for home as sunrise seeps over the still snoozing town.

So if your snowman's grin is crooked,
or he's lost a little height,
you'll know he's just been doing
what snowmen do at night.

In this happy collaboration what snowmen do at night is what kids love to do all through a joyful snow day, and Snowmen at Night shows the right way to spend the day.