Snowzilla

In a chirpy story of mild civil strife, a girl named Cami Lou constructs a humungous snowman (helpfully, her parents own a snowplow and a bulldozer) that attracts thousands of visitors. When angry neighbors protest ("A lady warned everyone, / 'Make no mistake--/ when temperatures rise, / he'll turn into a lake!' "), Cami and her brother work to have the snowman relocated. Working in acrylic and colored pencil, Haley portrays a playfully lopsided town, but Lawler's rhymes are often labored ("So Cami used e-mail and texting and blogging/ to save all their effort spent packing and slogging") and the ending feels pat. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

PreS-Gr 1--Lawler opens with this Dr. Seuss-like stanza: "It snowed without stopping/for week after week./When it ended at last, /Cami Lou took a peek." Cami Lou (whose name is reminiscent of Dr. Seuss's Cindy Lou Who) makes terrific use of a snow-packed landscape to create, with the help of her mother, father, and younger brother, the biggest snowman ever. "Thousands of people rode buses to see/the towering snowman, as tall as a tree." The burst of tourism is disrupted by petty neighbors, and the case against Snowzilla makes it all the way to court. Readers won't have much time to worry as the irrepressible Cami Lou thinks, emails, texts, blogs, and community organizes her way out of this modern dilemma. Lawler's rhymes occasionally sound contrived, but they scan beautifully. Haley's offbeat, busy, and chaotically colorful cartoon-style illustrations are a lively complement to the bouncy text.--Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY