The Snowman

The Snowman (1978) is a classic wordless children’s book by English writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs. This charming children’s story elevated Briggs to a renowned status among children’s book writers, although he also writes adult fiction. Owing to the book’s success and its distinct style of illustration, it was adapted for a short television show in 1982 that earned a BAFTA (British Academy Television Award) Award in the same year.

Each of the book’s thirty-two pages features eight to twelve illustrations. The first several panels show a young, unnamed boy with red hair waking up to a snowy landscape outside his bedroom window. He approaches his mother, probably to implore her to let him go outside. The boy puts on boots and a hat and rushes out the door. He rolls a snowball and then builds a statuesque pile of snow. He goes inside for a warm beverage with his mother, and (perhaps inspired by a conversation with her) returns outdoors to add a scarf, hat, tangerine nose, and buttons made from coal that he retrieves from a shed. At the end of the day, while the boy’s family watches television, the boy looks outside at his snowman.

Later that evening, while in bed, the boy awakens to go look at his snowman outside. As he looks out the window, he sees the snowman come to life, tipping his hat toward the boy. The boy invites the snowman inside his home, showing the snowman the television, a lamp, and a painting. He also shows the snowman around his kitchen, where the snowman experiences the dangers represented by the sink and the oven. Alternatively, the snowman seems to especially enjoy the tray of ice cubes and the freezer.



Next, the snowman and the boy go upstairs, entering the room of the boy’s sleeping parents. The snowman comically tries on the father’s tie, suspenders, and glasses. The boy then takes the snowman into another room where they play with a collection of colorful balloons and a flashlight. After playing with the toys, the boy takes the snowman into the garage and puts him in the passenger’s seat of his parents’ car while demonstrating the headlights. The snowman takes particular pleasure in the freezer that he finds in the garage. Finally, the boy and the snowman go into the kitchen and share a meal with many courses and candles to illuminate their plates. The snowman collects the empty dishes, and after cleaning the table, he invites the boy outside.

Once outside, the snowman takes the boy by the hand and they glide through the sky hand-in-hand against a backdrop of flecks of snow and a hazy, full moon. They continue flying together in this fashion over a cityscape with green and yellow cupolas and spires. Two full-spread illustrations show the pair flying above hills and then above the city. They land on a pier next to the sea, pausing briefly to look out on the water. They next jump over the water, landing back in the yard of the boy’s home, the snowman’s arm around the boy’s small shoulders. It is still nighttime as the boy and the snowman bid farewell to one another before the boy goes back inside to sleep. As the boy looks out his bedroom window, he sees the snowman standing alone in the snow, facing out into the open yard.

The next morning finds the boy waking up (over a series of a dozen small, nuanced illustrated panels) as the sun fills the room. The boy jumps out of bed and runs downstairs hastily, speeding by his parents who are eating breakfast at the kitchen table. The boy runs outside and looks in his yard to find a hat and scarf sitting atop a small pile of melted snow.



The magic of the illustrations lies in their freedom from captions, allowing the reader to invent details or character traits that he or she wants. The ending is rather ambiguous; when the young boy goes outside on a sunny morning to see a small pile of snow atop of which sits a hat and scarf, the reader may imagine (quite realistically) that the snowman has melted, but it is never explicitly stated. The book has a timelessness due in part to the relative ambiguity supplied by the soft, detailed, and distinctive illustrations that do all the storytelling in the absence of text.

Briggs was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2017 for this work as well as his several other contributions to British literature.