"Just outside my window,/ There are tracks in the snow./ Who made the tracks?/ Where do they go?" A girl in a bright red coat and striped scarf has great fun trying to solve the mystery, since it requires that she ramble all over the winter wonderland around her home. Working in a diminutive scale that feels just right for the book's small format, Yee (Fireman Small) follows his heroine as she probes the hole of a hibernating woodchuck (a cutaway view reveals the animal snuggled in its underground burrow), and investigates the bare branches from the vantage point of making a snow angel. Then, suddenly overwhelmed by the snow and cold (even though most of her face is swaddled in the scarf, Yee's droopy eyelids convey her fatigue), she has a revelation about the footprints that will bring a smile to readers of all ages. The author's rhymes may be workmanlike ("My feet are getting oh so cold./ There's still no sign of it./ And even though the time is late,/ I really hate to quit"), but the artwork more than compensates. Thanks to Yee's austere, feathery strokes, which resemble colored pencils on textured paper, readers will feel all the invigorating chill and quiet beauty of winter. Ages 2-6. (Oct.)
