Illustrated by Mary Azarian. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1998.
Hardcover edition. 32 pages. ISBN 0-395-86162-4.
Wilson Bentley, Vermont farm boy of the late 1800’s, loved snow from a very young age. He devoted his entire life to developing methods of capturing and reproducing the patterns of individual snowflakes so that others could share in the beauty and wonder of these fragile crystalline structures. Martin poignantly chronicles Bentley’s struggles, successes, and unswerving dedication.
Enough cannot be said regarding Mary Azarian’s classic woodcuts which evoke turn of the century rural Vermont with crisply outlined authenticity. Snowflake studded sidebars are used to communicate interesting factoids about Bentley’s life and accomplishments, including the fact that in all of the thousands of photos he took, no two identical snowflakes were ever found.
This book can be used as the centerpiece of a program about Winter or snow. Having Bentley’s original book of snowflake photos, Snowflakes in Photographs or Snow Crystals, on hand for perusal would be a bonus. An obvious craft project would be cutting out paper snowflakes.
Snowflake Bentley is the 1999 Caldecott Medal recipient.
Vocabulary builders include the simple science concepts of frozen water crystal formation, as well as the equipment processes used to see and photograph individual flakes. Narrative skills sequence the lifetime and work which Bentley achieved.
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