The Snow Man by Jonah Winter & Jeanette Winter

Can you imagine living in an abandoned shack with no electricity, no running water? Can you imagine sleeping in that shack with a skunk and a pine marten? Me neither. However, billy barr actively chose this lifestyle in the early 1970s. He still lives in this remote Colorado location, about 8 miles from Crested Butte. Early on in his isolated living, he got bored. He decided to start measuring snowfall each day. He took note of when the first wildflowers poked through the earth. Little did he know at the time, he was a citizen scientist, taking note of some of the earliest data on climate change in the Rocky Mountains. 

This biography picture book is perfect for little kids. It is short. It hooks the reader early with the skunk sleeping in the shack. It is fascinating. As I marveled over the story after reading it to my kids, I realized Jeanette Winter co-wrote and illustrated the book. Jeanette Winter wrote and illustrated 2 of my favorite picture books: “The Librarian of Basra” (set in Iraq) and “Wangari’s Trees of Peace” (set in Kenya). Check these out as well while you are at the library! 

Heart: I love stories of every day people doing something interesting that ultimately ends up helping their communities. While billy didn’t initially intend to collect data on our warming Earth, his decades-long data collection and field notes helped climate scientists immensely. Check out this short film on billy barr here.

Head: I am currently researching the Next Generation Science Standards so I can connect our public school’s science standards to my work-in-progress, a chapter book manuscript. A big piece of these science standards are those cross-cutting concepts, like patterns and cause and effect. The data billy barr collected has all of these important cross-cutting concepts.