Brown Girl in the Snow
In their new picture book, Brown Girl in the Snow, Yolanda T. Marshall and Marianne Ferrer remind readers that everything grows in its season.
Amina has moved from the sunny, warm Caribbean to the cold north and is feeling gloomy because she is missing all the beautiful plants in her garden back home. A class discussion and a trip to a local greenhouse have her slowly acclimatizing to her new environment, just like the plants she loves.
We are so fortunate to have access to many different stories about moving and immigration. Yolanda T. Marshall always brings her heart to each story she writes and this story is especially heartfelt. In this story, paralleling Yolanda’s feelings of moving to Canada in 1993, Amina is having a hard time adapting to the cold and the gloom that is Canada in the winter. For those of us born here, we don’t know any different but many readers are shocked experiencing snow for the first time. I love how Yolanda T. Marshall brings in all the beautiful songs and colours of her childhood to show readers how to adapt and grow in a new place.
The throughline in the story is a traditional Caribbean song called Brown Girl in the Ring. In this story, Yolanda has taken this traditional song from her childhood and adapted it to fit Amina’s new reality, blending the old with the new and creating something new and beautiful while also creating moments for young readers to participate in the story. The refrain of the song threads through the story and changes slightly throughout to show how Amina is also changing.
I love how this story can encourage children and their grownups to do a little winter adventure and to experiment with different ways of planting especially in the winter and how plants can be grown not just in the ground in the spring and summer but in many different ways, just like we grow in different ways.
Marianne Ferrer’s illustrations are gorgeous. She captivates readers through her bursts of brilliant colour, even in the gloomy winter. She invites all readers to enjoy a some tropical feelings in Canada through her images of the Caribbean and in the greenhouse. Readers will instantly love joining Amina and her new friends while they play and plant and learn.
