Book Descriptions
for Blizzard by John Rocco
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A two-day blizzard left four feet of snow on the ground of author/illustrator John Rocco’s hometown when he was a child. He recounts that time in a picture book in which the storm is just the prelude to adventure. On Monday and Tuesday it snowed. On Wednesday, “Dad shoveled the driveway so he could get the car out when the snowplows came.” But the plows didn’t come. By Friday, the cupboards were getting bare. Young John researched, gathered supplies, and practiced for the journey he embarked upon the next day. With tennis rackets strapped to his feet for snowshoes, he set off for the store, pulling a sled behind him. A double-page spread with fold-outs on either side creates a four-page map of his route, noting his diversions (e.g., building a snowman, making a snow angel, joining in on a snowball fight). He stopped by neighbors and took their orders for groceries, too, and with the sun setting eventually returned home, tired and triumphant. Rocco’s marvelous mixed-media art captures the sense of a winter storm and its aftermath in pictures ranging from panels and spot illustrations to the four-page display, all of it perfectly paired with the finely paced narrative. A brief author’s note tells a few additional details of his experiences as a ten-year-old boy in the Blizzard of 1978. (Ages 4–8)
CCBC Choices 2015. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2015. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
Korean edition of the Amazon #1 children's book, BLIZZARD (2014) by John Rocco, the author of the New York Times best-selling and Caldecott Honor-winning Blackout. This Blizzard is a recount story of Rocco's childhood experience during the New England's blizzard of 78 and skillfully illustrates the dynamic transformation of a snow storm to a spectacle of mother nature's power. In Korean. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.