'Tis the Season! Winter is Here by Kevin Henkes

WINTER IS...

... EVERYWHERE.

Spring, summer, and autumn are gradual changes.

But winter?

It comes and changes everything.

Leaves are not pale green, or deep green, or yellow or red. They are not THERE anymore! And water becomes different! It's downright flaky!

IT'S FALLING FROM THE SKY.

IT'S DRIPPING FROM THE ROOFS.

Winter is icicles hanging from roofs and frost covering windows in amazing patterns.

Winter even changes us! It's what makes people put on lots of clothes to keep from frosting up and freezing into icicles. It turns the whole landscape from colorful to white and/or gray. When winter comes, we know it.

WINTER COMES, AND THEN IT STAYS. AND STAYS, AND STAYS....

But as winter-savvy youngsters soon learn, when it goes... it sneaks away, shrinking little by little, leaving behind little trace mementos of where it's been... slushy snow in the shadows and then icy mud, in Kevin Henkes' look at winter, Winter Is Here (Greenwillow Press, 2018).

Even for children who live in climes where winter is less relentless, the season has a certain loveliness during those dark blue evenings when there's a hint of something soft and fluffy and magical in the air. As in the other books in the Caldecott and Newbery-winning Henkes' little Seasons series, In the Middle of Fall and When Spring Comes (see reviews here, and here), for everything there is a season. Henkes' lyrical prose, illustrated perfectly by Laura Dronzek's lovely illustrations of wintry weather, gives even winter's spare scene a certain beauty. Great as seasonal concept books for primary grades, Henkes' and Dronzek's books are just right for their time.