Heart of a Snowman »

Mary Kuryla & Eugene Yelchin are the creative husband-and-wife team behind Ghost Files: The Haunting Truth. They live in Southern California. Because it never snows there, they climbed to the top of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and spent a winter in a tiny cabin building snowmen and taking apart snowflakes in order to make this book.

Very Christmas Eve, a boy named Owen builds the very best snowman he can, only to see it melt away on Christmas Day. There must be a way to make it last, he thinks.

So begins an adventure that leads Owen to a magical place where curious animals study his snowman piece by piece in an attempt to remake a perfect snowman. But in the end, it is Owen who supplies the one thing they need the most. Have they finally found the secret to making a snowman that will last forever?

Publishers Weekly

On Christmas Eve, a boy named Owen wonders how to keep his snowman from melting; when a mysterious vessel beams up his snowman, he grabs hold. They're taken to a factory where snowmen are confiscated and disassembled for research purposes: rabbits oversee a snowman-dissecting machine, carrot noses are eaten, scarves shredded and a polar bear picks apart snowflakes with tweezers. In the end, Owen learns “[w]hen a boy makes a snowman, he gives it a heart,” and that's why snowmen really melt. Though kids may have as much difficulty as Owen does figuring out exactly what's going on, they will grasp the bittersweet message. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)