One Cold Night

A girl looks out of her bedroom window into the cold night, where a winter storm is gathering, and conjures up a host of howling cloud coyotes and an icy Snow Woman. This anthropomorphic figure works her chilly magic--sending birds, turtles and groundhogs scurrying for snug beds--but ``Black Bear didn't care.'' No matter what Snow Woman does to transform the world into a chilly landscape, this bruin stands firm, resisting the long sleep of winter. Yet the frosty queen has one last trick up her ice-purple sleeve, and soon Black Bear is bounding toward his den. In the first book that Ewart has both written and illustrated, her minimally told story seems to exist primarily as background for her imaginative landscapes--a visionary palette lends these wintry figures a special warmth. Snow Woman shimmers in glacial blue-violet, an ephemeral, spectral figure at once beautiful and fearful, and the winter night explodes in a dazzling swirl of orange sky and yellow shooting stars. In quiet counterpoint to the frenetic arrival of winter is the tangible domestic bliss within the house at the eye of the storm. Ages 3-6. (Nov.)