Diamond in the Snow

This book is for

Bob &
Margaret

 After taking more than a year to come up with the second Mole story, this third Mole story came hot on its heels. As I’ve already remarked in my comments on No Place Like Home, one of the striking things about Vanessa Cabban's night time illustrations for the first Mole book, Bringing Down The Moon, is the predominance of the colour blue. The second book was set in springtime and (although Vanessa had not started work on the illustrations at that point) I had envisaged that it would be predominantly green. I wanted to sustain this pattern of dominant colours and so I set this third story in wintertime so that Vanessa’s illustrations could be predominantly white for this book.

This prescriptive approach to the books’ colouring might be intimidating for some illustrators.  However Vanessa is very skilled at working with a limited palette and has once again produced a set of wonderful illustrations.

Mole is always chasing after the unattainable. The theme of this book is similar to that of Bringing Down the Moon, in that Mole becomes enamoured with a beautiful object, in this case an icicle. In this instance, Mole is able to attain the object of his desire, but only for a short time. At first he feels foolish, but eventually he understands that something can still be precious even if it has no lasting value.

I’m too old to remember my first experience of snow, so I was thinking about someone else when I was writing the beginning of the book. I had a college friend, who was an overseas student from Malaysia. As we walked back from a lecture one afternoon, it began snowing heavily, something that I had mixed feelings about, as I knew it meant a treacherous walk across campus for the next couple of days. However, my friend, who had never experienced a snowfall, was thrilled. I can still recall the look of child-like wonder on his face and the way that he spun around, whooping, with his arms outstretched trying to catch the falling snow.

Find out about the other Mole books Bringing Down the Moon, No Place Like Home and The Best Gift of All