Whatever the season, a girl tells her toddler brother, a visit to Grandma and Grandpa means, "You will have the best time ever!" Bowen's (I Loved You Before You Were Born
) direct, heartfelt prose and Bogacki's (My First Garden
) cozy compositions ensure this is no empty promise. Grandma and Grandpa are impressively spry: When the spring rains keep everyone inside, Grandpa does magic tricks ("He makes a penny disappear inside a blue hankie, and pulls yellow daisies from an old black hat"), and when the sky clears, Grandma loves to "splash-dance" through puddles." The book's structure is equally playful. Before the girl describes the fun of each season, she regales her brother with a different aspect of the journey to her grandparents' house (the pre-dawn wake-up, the way her pulse quickens when their house is in sight), elevating the car ride into a quest-like adventure. Bogacki further shakes things up by breaking most of his spreads into triptychs depicting different time frames. As the young narrator describes the way snow on the old house's porch looks "like Grandma's buttercream frosting," he depicts the girl creating a blizzard of torn paper for her enthralled brother in their living room, taking a snowy walk with Grandma and molding a snowball from the flakes on her grandparents' porch railing. A touching testimony to the deliciousness of anticipation and intergenerational love. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)
