Snow Time: First Snow in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy by Carl Sams and Jean Stoick

The chipmunk is a know-it-all busybody.

"HEY, SPOTTY! YOU DON'T LOOK SO GOOD. YOU'RE LOSING YOUR SPOTS! BETTER START HIDING YOUR ACORNS!"

"WHY WOULD I WANT TO HIDE ACORNS?" WONDERED THE FAWN.

"ACORNS ARE EVERYWHERE."

But the chipmunk knows a secret. And indeed, it seems everyone else is in the know except the young deer. Something big is about to happen. The woolly bear caterpillar chomps his way hurriedly across a fern in the dewy morning. The monarch butterfly leaves for a faraway summer elsewhere. The green leaves change colors and float down, down, down, and the woodchuck has only one word for him: "Hibernate!" A change is coming, he seems to say. It will come when the dragonflies no longer fly. The little deer feels as if he's being abandoned by the only world he knows.

"WHY CAN'T EVERYTHING STAY THE SAME?"

It's a thought that crosses our human minds, too, as summer seems to flee from us all too soon, and the little deer has the same anxiety we all feel.

"BUT I'M NOT READY!"

But Mama is wise in the ways of the world. She knows that her baby is now big and strong, with a thick, new coat. And she knows just where to go when the snow begins to blow.

"YOU ARE READY FOR THE FIRST SNOW OF THE WINTER," SAYS MAMA DOE.
LISTEN TO YOUR HEARTSONG. FOLLOW ME."

Carl Sams' and Jean Stoick's lovely First Snow in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy (Carl R. Sams Photography, 2007, 2010) chronicles the coming of winter, from the first liftoff of the brown owl and Canada geese for the southward journey to the first snowflake of winter, in a beautiful picture essay which personifies the enormous changes from high summer to windswept snowscape in elegant text and beautiful illustrative photos, a book which is a good readaloud for those classroom seasonal units as well as for quiet contemplation.

Sams' and Stoick's earlier best-selling photographic nature essays include Stranger in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy (Nature) Winter Friends, and Lost in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy (Connect-It).