Little Snowflake

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This story can be enjoyed as a fun story about the little snowflake, as an explanation for where snow comes from, and/or as a larger education about the water cycle. I think this is the best book I have seen to teach the water cycle to young children so far! The happy little snowflake and friends bring these lessons in a very approachable way with so much fun. LITTLE SNOWFLAKE is a delightful story that explains the water cycle through the eyes of a small snowflake. Tiny drops of water freeze and turn into a snowflake, who travels down to the earth with the wind. It lands on a tree before heading to the ground, where children make it part of a snowball and then a snowman. When the sun comes out, they melt and become vapor that travels up to the sky, where they can again be made into snow. What I loved: This book is full of great things- beyond the lessons and educational elements, there are lovely illustrations with animals, diverse children, and plenty of the little snowflake. The text is also rhyming, making it fun to read aloud and listen to. There is also a nice addition of the full cycle at the end of the book that lays out all the text in even simpler terms. While toddlers may not fully understand the process, this makes it easier to grasp and is a great introduction! But really, [Alice] shouldn’t belong to anyone, least of all Lewis Carroll. She exists independently of him.’

Besides being a coming-out-age story filled with complications and quirky moments, the story is also about self-acceptance and familial relationship. As Debbie steps out of her comfort zone, she has to navigate between new peers and the family bubble. Things eventually fall apart and the dark issues surrounding the family history and mental health are uncovered. Don’t apologise, Xanthe! Stop being friends with this asshole instead! Sometimes, the treasure was dumping the assholes you met along the way! Though seemingly unable to escape comparisons with Sally Rooney, this book is in an entirely different register from Rooney's work. While Rooney is interested in philosophical questions about our place in the world and how relationships work, Nealon's work is much grittier and down-to-earth. This is not a slight on either author: I've really enjoyed both of their work, but I think the similarities between them are superficial. Though Nealon's novel begins with Debbie going to university, this story is rooted in the world of a rural dairy farm. The world of Dublin and of Trinity college are secondary to the beating heart of the novel, which is Debbie's immediate family: her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. The family is loving, but struggles to function: Billy blames himself for his mother's death, and drinks heavily, while Maeve seems constantly on the point of breakdown. Debbie also uses alcohol to cope: it's all she's learnt. Though she was alienated at school, she also feels dislocated in university, and struggles to find her place, though she befriends the privileged but depressed Xanthe. This book is also an indictment of the struggling mental health systems and of clueless therapists, as characters try to seek help and meet bureacratic walls.Debbie is raised on her family's rural dairy farm. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who keeps her past and spends most of her days alone writing and dreaming. Maeve believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small house is Maeve's brother Billy, who lives in a caravan behind her house and fiercely love and protect Debbie. My bias against the first-person POV is mainly aesthetic. However, there are some practical reasons for my ire. The main one is that this choice of POV makes it even more difficult than it is already to keep from conflating ‘author’ and ‘protagonist’. Like, conceptually I know that MC Debbie and author Louise Nealon are two distinct entities and may indeed be radically different in every way. However, a bildungsroman-ish novel with clear autobiographical elements (Debbie’s arc is all about a country girl leaving home to study at Trinity; Nealon’s bio states that she’s from a farm in Kildare and studied English in Trinners) and a first-person POV? Let’s just say I’m not giving ‘Debbie’ much benefit of the doubt when she speaks like a tit in her early twenties.

However, Debbie is starting college soon. She has to step out of her dwelling place, commutes to classes and meets new people. In the first week, she was overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the anonymity of city life. When 18-year-old Debbie makes the transition from secondary school student to college student, she's overwhelmed by the adulting decisions she now faces in school, the pressure to socialise with other students and she lives a life treading between two worlds - that of a more metropolitan Dublin, and her home on the family dairy farm caring for her unstable mother, and talking Greek mythology with her beloved uncle Billy. This is really very mean. We are not given any context for her being so rude, especially when she states that she was the go-to person for ‘the shift’ all through school. She employed no entry requirements before, so this random dude who knows her by reputation can’t really be blamed for asking. Also ONE PARAGRAPH LATER: If I haven’t earned the title of depression, then neither has she. Because she is a lot less miserable than I am. Or she certainly ought to be.”But Debbie’s life is changing. Earning a place at Trinity College Dublin, she commutes to her classes a few days a week. Outside the sheltered bubble of her childhood for the first time, Debbie finds herself both overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the pace and anonymity of city life. While the familiarity of the farm offers comfort, Debbie still finds herself pulling away from it. Yet just as she begins to ponder the possibilities the future holds, a resurgence of strange dreams raises her fears that she may share Maeve’s fate. Then a tragic accident upends the family’s equilibrium, and Debbie discovers her next steps may no longer be hers to choose. I can’t imagine someone going through life without grasping the concept of the iconic six-armed snow crystal,’ I say. The story revolves around Debbie, the narrator, who is embarking on her university years. She’s leaving the dairy farm for the sophisticated Trinity College in Dublin. This is a coming-of-age story in that Debbie has been protected at the farm, with little city involvement. She’s intimidated by not only moving to university, but also navigating the big city. This is the story of her finding her place in the world, learning what other lifestyles there are other than dairy farming. Nealon consistently refuses to use contractions, for no reason. It can’t be in service of rendering accurate Hiberno-English, because that would require more contractions, not less. I inspect what I just squirted out of myself before I flush it away. Foam fizzed on top of the watery gold like froth on a pint.”

Hoci to má dlhý rozbeh, tak za polkou to ide šialene dolu kopcom. A koniec! Vločkin koniec bol také pohladenie na duši, kde cítite dobrý pocit z toho ako sa to celé vyvinulo. Proste také ukončenie som potrebovala. First, thank you GR friend Peter for reviewing “Snowflake” by Louise Nealon and gushing over her honest representation of the country/farm folk in Kildare County in Ireland. According to Peter, who hails from that area, there is little literature reflecting the lives of the people in that area. One main reason I read is to learn about something I did not previously been acquainted. I wanted to give this novel a shot because I was very curious. Final verdict: Bringing together all these lovely illustrations with educational elements make this a great read for any young child's library. LITTLE SNOWFLAKE is a great book to share with young learners/readers and teach them about the water cycle in the process. Snowflake hat mich in vielerlei Hinsicht positiv überrascht. Am Anfang dachte ich, es wäre die typische Geschichte einer jungen Frau vom Lande, die völlig naiv an die Uni kommt, sich dort zurechtfinden muss und dabei kaum Unterstützung von zu Hause erhält. Das ist es zum Teil auch. Allerdings ist dies nur der äußere Rahmen, denn die Geschichte geht viel tiefer. Debbie has various encounters with the psychology and psychiatry services, which she describes thusly.The rest of the book is just a series of events in the lives of Debbie’s bipolar mother and depressed uncle. Debbie herself may or may not have mental health issues, but the topic is treated with such disdain and scorn that it’s hard to say where either Nealon comes down on it. It's disturbingly possible that she's on the side of the people who coined the snowflake [derogatory] version of the title. Snowflake is a note to self to cherish your family and friends - and the moments spend alone with ourselves. Lousie Nealon is an Irish author that you shouldn't miss out on. In an interview with the Irish Times, author Louise Nealon provided the roots of the novel as being personal. When she was 18, she awoke in the middle of the night convinced she was dreaming someone else’s dream. This was immediately dismissed as delusions. In Ireland, psychiatry is not thought of as being necessary, although it’s improving. Nealon wanted to write a story about the silence of mental illness in Ireland because for her, psychiatry didn’t help her, but reading literature did.