It was a brisk January afternoon. All of the kids in school were outside for a recess. Katrina huddled into her coat as she rolled a snowball on the ground, trying to make a snowman. She found it rather hard to push, because the ball kept getting heavier.

"Hey, do you want some help with that?"

Katrina looked up and saw a tall Grade 5 boy standing behind her. She thought she'd seen his face in the yearbook before; Maxwell Vancelli, they called him. "Uh huh."

"Here, I'll roll this," said Maxwell, "you run and go find rocks and sticks and stuff."

Katrina ran and scoured the playground for rocks and sticks. She picked up a handful of little branches from around the big oak tree. Rocks were scarce because of all the snow, so instead she picked out a few stray leaves that were sticking out from the snow.

When she came back, she saw that Maxwell had accumulated a few other Grade 5 kids rolling the snowman together. She stuck the little twigs in the small snowball on top for hair and wedged the bigger sticks and leaves into the front for the face. By the end, they had all built a dinky little snowman together.

Soon, the bell rang to go back inside. "Come on, Mac," said a Grade 5 boy to Maxwell, "we have a test soon." Everyone ran back inside.


Later that afternoon, when school was over, Katrina was relaying the whole story to her daddy. "And then when we went back outside at lunch, we got Mr. Jeong to take a picture."

"Vraiment? Eh bien, j'espere que tu avais un bien temps." (Really? Well, I hope you had a good time.)

When they got home and out of their coats, Katrina brought her daddy to the computer to show him the picture Mr. Jeong took. Daddy opened up the computer, and Katrina pulled herself up into his lap. "See, that's the one," she said when the picture came up.

Daddy ruffled her hair. "Bon travail, ma belle." (Good job, sweetie.)