Snow Time! A Perfect Day by Carin Berger

June's so rare days deserve all the credit they get, but in Carin Berger's brand-new A Perfect Day (Greenwillow, 2012) snowy days in December get their due.

It snowed and snowed, and snowed, and snowed.

The whole world was white.

In Berger's literary day trip, a troop of neighboring kids come out of their cottages into a grand, white world, to engage all in all the wonderful games that children everywhere play when there is a deep new snowfall. They build tall, tall snowmen, graceful snow angels, race downhill on well-laden sleds, and form teams to take on each other in massive snowball fights. The joyous kids play all day, until at last the cold and dark drive them in to dry clothes, hot chocolate, dinner, warm baths, and deep dreams, perhaps of more snow days.

Reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keat's classic The Snowy Day: 50th Anniversary Edition, but with somewhat older children as her subjects, Carin Berger's glowing, softy stylized scenes complement her spare text as her snowfall fills most of each double-page spread, sometimes even inundating the page with pure white against which her cozy cottages, evergreens, and figures seem small, with an almost Grandma Moses primitive landscape ambience.

The New York Times says, "Its images—stark trees and strangely shaped clouds—capture something more elusive, the eerie otherworldliness of a landscape transformed."