THE SNOWMAN CODE

Ten-and-a-half-year-old Blessing is experiencing the longest winter London has seen in centuries.

It’s March, but the heavy snow shows no signs of melting. Even worse, winter sometimes makes her mom so sad that Blessing has to stay with other families while she recovers in the hospital. Blessing has been skipping school to avoid her bullies, and one afternoon, while she’s hiding in Victoria Park, she meets an eccentric 627-year-old talking snowman named Albert Framlington. The new friends set out to fix “the broken weather,” so that spring can return to England and Albert and the other snowmen can follow their natural cycle of melting and reappearing in a wintry part of the world. This heartwarming and hopeful story moves at a brisk pace as Blessing and Albert race to complete their mission. Stephenson gently and honestly explores bullying, foster care, and seasonal affective disorder (the latter two aren’t explicitly named as such in the text) through the eyes of a child in accessible language that is ideal for readers who are gaining confidence in reading longer novels. Blessing works to stop the bullying and support her mother. In a nuanced depiction of foster care, her placement family is kind but no substitute for home. Brown’s charming spot illustrations show Blessing as a Black girl and Albert as stout, with angular stick eyebrows, bottle cap eyes, a potato nose, three jaunty leaves for hair, and a tattered scarf.

A whimsical, enchanting adventure grounded in friendship and resilience.