For Everything There Is a Season: Almost Time by Gary D. Schmidt and Elizabeth Stickney

When Ethan had to eat his pancakes with applesauce instead of maple syrup one Sunday morning, he knew it was almost sugaring time.

"Is the sap running yet?" he asked.

Dad shook his head. "Not until the days get warmer."

But the days stay cold and the nights remain long. Dad tries buttered cornbread and oatmeal with raisins and walnuts, and at least one thing changes. Ethan chomps a walnut and discovers a loose tooth.

Still the weather stays cold and his tooth stays loose.

Now Ethan had two things to wait for.

Ethan notices that the sun seems to come up a little bit earlier, but his tooth is still loose--

until--

At lunchtime his tooth comes out and now he's got a surprise for his dad... and there is a surprise for Ethan when he gets off the school bus....

The sap is running. The maple trees are tapped and buckets are filling up, and it's sugaring off time for sure. Dad and Ethan carry in enough sap to boil up a batch of sweet syrup together.

And soon there's maple syrup for Ethan's Sunday pancakes, in Gary D. Schmidt's and Elizabeth Stickney's beautiful tale of the fullness of time, Almost Time (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion Books, 2020). Spring and maple syrup come in their own sweet time in this gentle tale of patience, wisdom, and pleasure in the cycles of the seasons and the enduring warmth of family life.

Newbery and Printz Award-winning author Schmidt paces this story perfectly for preschool and primary readers who are often impatient as they wait for good things to happen, and in his endearing mixed-media illustrations, artist G. Brian Karas slyly portrays the subtle changes in the turning of the season toward spring which young readers will no doubt spot before Ethan does. A perfect book about waiting for good things to happen and the cycle of the seasons of life.