Snow at the Edge of the World

A favorite picture book of mine is Snow by Uri Shulevitz.  It knocks me out on so many levels and I never tire of it.  I particularly admire the sparsity of the text in realtion to the images and the way they lend themselves to one another.  I move through the words and pictures from one page to the next in a manner similar the way I might experience a silent movie.  There is an air of quietness for me in the way that it unfolds that makes the experience of the pictures all the more entrancing.

The one thing about the book that casts the biggest spell on me is the way it's drawn.  I can't get enough of the quality of exaggeration that Shulevitz gets into his cast of characters, not to mention the jumble of buildings dancing in the background. 

It's becasue of my fondness for this book that I did a double take the first time I came across Lyonel Feininger's City at the Edge of the World at the Whitney Museum.  So much about it is similar to the look and feel of Shulevitz's Snow.  Not only in the way that things are exaggerated, but there is also a close affinity in the choice of the setting and styling of the characters.  

Maybe it's coincidental, but I am very curious to know if Shulevitz drew upon Feininger's work for inspiration.  Either way, both make my head spin.