If the hush of the boy and his snowman exploring the sleeping house and slipping into the winter night spoke to you, you’ll love the father-and-child walk in Owl Moon. It’s one intimate outing—soft snow, frosty breath, careful footsteps—chasing a glimpse of a great horned owl. Like the rooftop flight in The Snowman, the magic here is in companionship, stillness, and that one luminous winter night you never forget.

When the snowman lifts the boy into the sky and you feel that hush-before-dawn wonder, The Polar Express delivers a similar, cozy enchantment: a midnight train, hot chocolate, the North Pole, and a bell whose ring you keep believing in. Like the boy’s moonlit flight and quiet return before morning, it captures the feeling that the night can hold a secret trip just for you.

If the wordless panels of The Snowman—the boy turning on lamps, opening the fridge for the snowman, gliding over fields—pulled you in, Flotsam invites you to do that again. It’s entirely told through pictures: a camera washes ashore, revealing improbable underwater scenes and a chain of children who found it before. You supply the words and wonder, just as you did watching the snowman and boy share their secret night.

If the ending of The Snowman—that quiet morning when the boy finds only a collapsed mound where his friend stood—lingered with you, The Giving Tree offers a similar ache. Across a lifetime, a boy and a tree share a bond that changes with the seasons of his life. Like watching the snowman melt after a night of joy, it’s tender, simple, and unforgettable in how it holds joy and loss together.

If you treasured the boy and the snowman’s immediate friendship—playing through the night, then facing morning—this story traces a friendship across spring, summer, fall, and winter. City Dog and Country Frog teach each other games, and when the seasons change, the goodbye is handled with the same gentle grace as that final snowy page in The Snowman. You’ll feel the warmth as much as the wistfulness.