I dare you not to fall in love with this beautiful book…in fact once you open it and see a stunning snowflake on a blue background you’d have to be some kind of insane robot not to go ooooohhhh!!!! I am a massive fan of snow, from days off school to walking the dog during the winter, hearing that crunch as you break through virgin snow is perfection….It’s why I save up my leave and take December off work each year in the hope of having some snow.

When I started this book I was expecting to have fifty chapters each based on a word for snow but it is so much more than that. Campbell takes you on a journey around the world to see how snow has affected different cultures, she takes you places you would never associate with snow, Thailand, Hawaii and Ethiopia are three places I would never have considered having snow. I loved reading the stories and myths based around the origins of the words, being English the word snow to me means “that white cold stuff that causes people to drive like crazy and crash their cars” but to other cultures their words have so much more depth, quite often based around a tragedy. There is a lot to learn here too, a bit of science here and there and interesting facts like the coldest city, you’ll never guess it.

Climate change gets covered here and it is always shocking the effect this is having on the world, so many people rely on snow and ice and it’s gradual retreat is heart-breaking. Another hard subject was how some languages are spoken by less and less people, it’s sad how there is a chance that some could vanish forever, there is hope though, I think it is great that the app Duolingo increases awareness of old languages and is inspiring many people to learn them, an impressive number of people took up Gaelic when it was added.

Two of the most impressive additions to this book was that Campbell included Sign Language, so often books on words miss out that language, kudos to Campbell for including it. Also I loved that fact that fake snow gets a mention, quite often the snow in movies is all many people get to see, it may not be real snow but it is still important.

I do have one gripe with the book, some words are so strange that I had no idea how to pronounce them, it really could have done with a guide on how to say them out loud, in the end I just had to wing it. One of my favourite was “Kunstschnee” I’m pretty sure I was pronouncing that one wrong. Another fantastic word was from Iceland, Hundslappadrifa, a wonderful language.

This was a very interesting read and because the book is so stunning it would make the perfect Christmas gift for any reader out there.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/blog-tour-fifty-words-for-snow-by-nancy-campbell/