The Snowman is an illustrated children’s book published in 1978. In 1982, an animated cartoon adaptation of the book was produced. Despite being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, this decision seems absolutely inexplicable as it seems to miss the entire point of the book upon which it is based. The point of Brigg’s book version of The Snowman is precisely that it already is, in essence, a short silent film.
The most immediately striking aspect of the book is that it contains no dialogue. Actually, the most immediately striking aspect of the book is probably its layout, but its lack of dialogue is essential to its layout. Briggs did not merely create a traditional illustrated picture book featuring just one or two images per page. The very first page, in fact, is comprised of ten drawings. Nine of them are equal-sized, square-shaped, laid out in a grid Brady Bunch-style. The tenth is the last one at the bottom of the page, analogous to a wide-screen rectangle. The first page tells the story of an unnamed boy waking up in bed, looking out the window to see it is snowing, getting dressed, and running outside. Not a single word is found in any of the squares or the long rectangle along the bottom. The images along convey the story.
While there are minor variations in the composition of the illustrations, each of the succeeding pages effectively recreates the same effect. Multiple small drawings proceed to tell the story of the unnamed boy building a snowman over the course of the day, heading back into the house at night, being beckoned by the now-living snowman back outside, inviting the snowman into the house where several different adventures take place.
