The Sweater

Offering community care alongside space to heal is the gentle model animating this compassionate woodland tale. When raccoon Holly reaches out to an unfamiliar little bird who seems to have “been through some things,” the avian newcomer retreats to a woodpecker’s now abandoned home. Understanding that “life is heavy sometimes,” Holly rallies the local animal community to help: each one recalls “when they were new and the things they had gone through” and contributes elements for a handsome patchwork sweater that Holly gifts the bird just as winter arrives. Warmed and heartened, the bird accepts his neighbors’ help fortifying his new home for winter before the creatures settle into their respective dens for the duration, their concern for one another never dimming. And one morning when “the wind overslept,” the bird supplies a contribution of his own—expressing his gratitude with “the clearest, sweetest song his friends had ever heard.” Workmanlike language from Theule (Tove Under the Tree) finds a fitting visual expression in vintage-inflected, earth-toned mixed-media illustrations by White (That’s Me Loving You), which suggest both the reality of life’s seasons and the quiet grace of a community in which “every gift mattered to the whole” and each creature belongs to it, too. Ages 3–7. Author’s agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt. Illustrator’s agent: Nicole Tugeau, Tugeau 2. (Feb.)