“Toys Meet Snow” by Emily Jenkins. (Book Review)

Lumphy, StingRay, and Plastic are the charismatic toys from the beloved chapter books Toys Go Out, Toy Dance Party, and Toys Come Home created by acclaimed author Emily Jenkins and Caldecott Medal–winning illustrator Paul Zelinsky.

StingRay, Lumphy the buffalo, and Plastic the bouncy red ball, are all snow-suited up and ready to explore out in the snowy yard while their owner is away on winter vacation. These toys are brave but not quite ready to understand this snowy wonderland! Dolly loves the familiarity of the toys to her own, the visual humor (i.e. Lumphy’s mitten on his head), and the fact that StingRay is a “dry-clean only” plush toy, so he conscientiously wears a plastic bag bodysuit, had me laughing out loud! But most of all, we love the sweet way the author has explained the world around them,(“‘[Snow is] a blanket of peace over the world’”), even though know-it-all Plastic Ball corrects her every time (“‘No, it’s frozen water…. I read it in a book’”).