Eye of the Beholder! A Day So Gray by Marie Lamba

"Summer's lease hath all too short a stay," said Shakespeare,and he had a point. As the bright riot of summer shades fade into fall's muted hues, winter brings an admittedly limited palette to the landscape.

As two girls suit up for a chilly outing, one of them is feeling blue. The view out the window indeed shows few hues!

"This day is so gray!"

"No, it isn't!" says her friend.

The first girl points out that the field is blah brown, and so are the woods. But her friend makes her take a second look at the subtle shades to be seen even in winter.

She cites the warm brown of some trees, the deep red of berries clinging to the brown bushes, the purplish shadows beneath them. Her doubting friend persists.

"Well, this snow is boring white.

That cat is black."

But her perceptive friend points out the many shades of the snow. She says that the cat has markings of white, glowing green eyes, and a pink nose, too.

And when they come inside and warm up in front of the roaring fireplace, the picky girl says she hates orange. But then, there's the sunset, with so many other warm colors all together.

It's a day that is much more than gray, in Marie Lamba's forthcoming salute to the ways of bleak days, A Day So Gray (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019), who shows how to "always look on the bright side of life" in the variety of different seasons. After all, the girl who hates the few hues of winter is really taking an overzealously black-and-white position on seasonal colors. Artist Alea Marley's appealingly vibrant wintry scenes and her charming little girls who make their cases well can speak for most of us who can, if we try, find something to love in all the seasons.

Hot chocolate, anyone? It's there, too, in shade and hue!