The Snowman Code – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Friendship, snowmen, bullies, rule-following.
Children’s book title: The Snowman Code.
Children’s author: Simon Stephenson.
Children’s illustrator: Reggie Brown.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Harper Collins Children’s Books.
ISBN: 9780008668761.
Recommended for children aged: 7+ year-olds.
First published: Hardback October 2024.
This children’s book is ideal for Reading before or after Christmas. Beginning a discussion about bullying, mental health issues, especially affecting those close to you, and what happens when you love and temporarily lose someone. Or just for pleasure, as this is a funny and friendly story.
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Our review:
Blessing is ten and a half, and she lives in London with her mum who gets quite poorly, especially in the winter. Unfortunately for Blessing and her mum, it’s now May, and the snow is still on the ground!
Blessing has also had trouble at school; three children in her class pick on her endlessly. In her mind, they are the Driplet Triplets, and because of them, she doesn’t go to school anymore. Instead, she hides at the pictures, the theatre, or, luckily, the park. Her mum doesn’t know, and her teacher thinks she’s moved to Australia!
As she’s trudging through the park, she sees a snowman move, and suddenly things change. Blessing discovers a whole new world where her friend, Albert Framlington, a six-hundred-year-old snowman with romance worries, lives by the Snowman Code! Gradually, they become friends, helping each other until, finally, spring arrives. Although Blessing has lost her friend, she knows he is still all around her and always will be.
Our verdict:
The Snowman Code is a lovely book with a nice message mixed into a story that should entertain most 7-9-year-olds. Blessing lives with her mum but has been taken into care a few times because of her mother’s mental health issues. Blessing hasn’t been to school for months due to relentless bullying, and my only criticism would be that her teacher didn’t seem aware of this, which was a shame.
Six-hundred-year-old Albert Framlington has girlfriend problems! These cause a few difficult days for Blessing, but once she understands what Albert is concerned about, everything comes together, leaving the reader with a positive message.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- Discuss how Albert gets some of his facts incorrect during the story. What can we do when someone gets something very wrong? Albert, for instance, thinks he spent one winter with the penguins that live in Africa!
- As we don’t have an Albert to help if we’re being bullied, what is the best thing to do to change things?
- What would it be like to have winter for over half the year? Discuss the best and worst parts, as well as what you would miss the most when the snow melted, or if it didn’t.
- A cross-curricular activity between literacy and art could involve studying the snowmen from the book and then figuring out how you would build your own.
Many thanks to Harper Collins Children’s Books for the review copy.
To order a class set of this book, please click below to order via uk.bookshop.org, an organisation that supports local bookshops, or Amazon.co.uk.
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If you like The Snowman Code by Simon Stephenson you might also like: our reviews of The Silver Road by Sinéad O’Hart, Wildoak by C.C. Harrington, Solstice: Around the World on the Longest, Shortest Day by Jen Breach and Call of the Titanic by Lindsay Galvin.
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