Mr. Bentley was "a boy who loved snow more than anything else in the world." Where others saw cold and discomfort in his home of Jericho, Vermont, he saw beauty. That was good becaues the snowfall averages around 120 inches a year there. "He said snow was as beautiful as butterflies, or apple blossoms." In the good weather, he could net butterflies or carry apple blossoms to show to others, but snowflakes were more difficult to share. His mother (who was his teacher until he was 14) gave him an old microscope, and he began to look at snowflakes in the cold. He noticed that no two were alike, and began to draw them.

At 17, he learned that you could photograph what you could see in a microscope. His parents made an enormous investment and got him one. The cost was equal to the value of his father's whole herd of ten cows. The camera was as large as a calf. In those days (1882), you had to use large glass plates to make images.

From then one, he was committed to his photography. Some winters, he could only make a few photographs successfully. The best time was during a snow storm in 1928, when he made over 100 in two days overlapping Valentine's day.

He learned to make his images better and better, and shared them with others. During the good weather, he also photographed spiders' webs, the dew on natural objects, and other small scenes of nature. He earned a little money from all this, but his costs exceeded his revenues by almost 4 to 1 over a lifetime. All of his money went for photography. When he was 66, some scientists gave him the money to publish a book of his photographs. Shortly thereafter, he died of pneumonia contracted after photographing during a blizzard. The town honored him with a plaque.

The book contains the story of Mr. Bentley's life, has sidebars that provide more detail on the science and certain aspects of his life, shows photographs, and is illustrated with the hand-colored woodcuts I mentioned earlier. The result is something that can appeal to a child in different ways at different ages. You can read this mostly as being a biography, or as mostly about snowflakes, or as mostly about photography of nature.

Most parents would encourage their children to do what they love. Here is a life that shows the wisdom of that inclination. In the course of reading this book, I encourage you to tell your child that she or he should find a similar passion and explore it. In the process, you should describe your own passions, and how you explore them to provide a further example.

Explore all of the uniqueness of yourself and your children! No two are exactly alike -- like snowflakes!