Winter Is the Warmest Season

In this cozy, wintertime picture book, a child muses about how most people think the warmest season is "summer,/ with its long steamy days./ But not me./ My world is warmest in winter." The child lists a plethora of things that demonstrate warmth in winter—a hat that "grows earflaps," and, in one of the strongest illustrations, animals sleeping "under thick blankets of snow," pictured curled up, embryo-like, in safe circular havens below ground. Sometimes the text contrasts winter- and summertime activities, with a sprinkling of comfy imagery, as when "summer's cool fans hide/ in dark basements" and winter's "sleeping radiators awake/ to their dragon selves, banging/ and hissing." Youngest readers may have difficulty following some of the more abstract acrylic paintings. For instance, to illustrate the radiators, cloud-like patches of snow in each corner of the spread feature either the text or images of two cats peering out of attic windows, while the interior of the house spreads out like a fan, with radiators steaming in three different rooms above a basement with a pot-bellied furnace. While children may be intrigued by all the warm things to be found in coldest winter, there's little visual plot in this lengthy volume, and Stringer's raindrops-on-roses litany full of "warm woolly sweaters" and "candles burn[ing] in candleplaces," may not be enough to keep young readers turning the pages. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)