A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Beach Lane Books
(SImon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
(pub. 10.3 cvjusdx.2023)
40 pages
Baby to 8 years
Author: Jonah Winter
and Illustrator: Jeanette Winter
Character: Mercedes Sosa
Overview:"When billy barr came to the mountains as a young man, his only companions were a skunk and a pine marten. He needed something to fill the hours. So he began measuring the snow that fell. Day after day, and year after year, he measured.
As he grew older, he noticed something: the snow was disappearing. It arrived later, melted sooner, and there wasn’t as much of it. He shared his records with a local scientist, who shared them with other scientists, until his measurements were used by scientists all over the world studying climate change. Thanks to his curiosity, groundbreaking data was gathered that still helps us today!"
Tantalizing taste:
"He recorded the date
of the first snowfall each winter
and the date in spring
of the first wildflower blossoms.
He noted when animals
came out of hibernation
at the end of winter.
He noted when certain birds
arrived in spring -
such as the broad-tailed hummingbirds
who always arrived just in time
to drink the nectar
of the glacier lily blossoms.
This was his life."
And something more: Jonah Winter in the Author's Note explains that "The Snow Man is a true story about a real person named billy barr ... who grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, but has spent most of his life in the Rocky Mountains, living alone at the bottom of a 12,631-foot mountain in the wilderness of a ghost town called Gothic, eight miles from the nearest town with any people, Creston Butte. He first came to this location in 1972 when he was twenty-one years old, still a college student and only intending to stay for one summer ...
But as the years progressed, he started noticing patterns - signs that the climate up there in the mountains was changing, getting warmer. And what started as a random pastime soon became the focus of his life - and an invaluable resource for scientists studying climate change."
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