Ravenlocks and the Three Ice Bears: The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett

As winter settles in, Jan Brett's recent retelling of the venerable Goldilocks tale, The Three Snow Bears, seems just right for the season.

Aloo-ki, an Inuit girl, is out on a fishing expedition when her sled dogs begin to drift away on an ice floe. Trying to follow, she finds an igloo with promise of warmth and hot soup drifting from its smoke hole. Inside no one is home, but Aloo-ki samples the three bowls of breakfast broth cooling on the table, tries on the three sets of boots beside the fire, and with a "Time for a nap" and a yawn finally falls asleep in a just-right pile of warm furs nearby.

Meanwhile a family of polar bears, strolling while their soup cools, come upon some adrift Huskies. Mama and Papa Bear slip into the icy ocean to push the dogs to safety and tie them outside their igloo. Inside, Baby Bear discovers his soup gone, his boots askew, and someone snoozing in his sleeping furs.

Awaking to the frightening sight of three looming snow bears, Aloo-ki dives between Papa Bear's huge legs and makes her escape. Finding her sled and dog team just outside, she hops aboard and flies toward home over the ice, not forgetting to wave a thank-you to the bemused bears she leaves behind.

Brett's Arctic re-setting of the old English story of a trespassing lass is deft, and her portrayals of the facial expressions of the venturesome girl and the bears who suffer a home invasion are charmingly humorous, but it is her beautiful landscapes and backgrounds, in their palette of whites, grays, and ice blues, with touches of warm brown and deep red, which light up the well worn story with a fresh touch. Brett journeyed to Inuit lands to prepare her paintings for this book, and the touches of native decorative patterns in the clothes and in the frames around each picture give the well-traveled story a firm sense of place.

What Goes Around....: Rabbit's Gift by George Shannon

Retelling a folktale variously credited to China, the Middle East, Japan, France, and Germany, George Drinnon's just published Rabbit's Gift narrates the gentle story of the gift which keeps on giving.

With deep snow coming, Rabbit hurriedly forages for winter food in a frozen farm field and unearths not one, but two fine fat turnips. Altruistically, Rabbit chooses not to cache but to share his bounty, leaving one turnip at the door of his friend Donkey. Donkey in turn returns from his search with a potato and elects to pass the turnip on to friend Goat. When Goat gets lucky and comes home with a whole cabbage to himself, he passes the turnip down the line to Deer's door.

"How kind," thinks Deer, "Someone's left me a gift. But there's no need to keep more than I can eat. With snow this deep, Rabbit couldn't have found much food." Deer highsteps his way through the snow to Rabbit's house, where he tenderly returns the gift to its originator's door.

"I don't know who to thank," says Rabbit when he finds the food the next morning, "but I know just who to share it with! The final page shows all the friends enjoying a tasty tidbit of turnip together.

Laura Dronzek's elemental thick black line and watercolor drawings have a folkloric primitive feel perfect for this simple tale, which like the turnip, has been passed along from place to place with love.

Sorry, Gotta Run!: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, by Caralyn and Mark Buehner

In a jolly little log cabin in the leafy woods, a bow-tied Papa Bear, a be-aproned Mama Bear, and Wee Little Bear dig into their steaming bowls of porridge, hungry as, well, bears. Papa finds his too hot, Mama likewise, and Wee Little Bear seems to mumble through his scalded lips, "My porch has a bus light, too." Off they go for the requisite stroll while their breakfast cools.

Enter the blonde scofflaw, complete with cowboy boots and a whirling jump rope, who skips into the cottage and tries out the seating arrangement as a jump rope gym:

Big chair, middle chair, little chair, too,
Somebody's here to bounce on you....
This chair has no bounce at all,
This chair makes me feel so small.
But this chair looks like it's just right.
I'll bounce me up an appetite!

When inevitably the wee chair collapses under her, Goldilocks shrugs it off with a cavalier "Oopsy-daisy, what a mess/Bounced a bit too much, I guess!"

After working up an appetite, Goldi makes short work of the bowls of cereal and looks about for a place to take an apres-porridge nap.

Goodness, I'm a sleepyhead!
I think I'll jump right into bed.

As Goldilocks sleeps in her chosen spot, the even hungrier and grumpier bears return to find their porridge purloined, their seating dis-assembled, and their mattresses mussed. Wee Little Bear wonders if they've been invaded by a wild beast, a monster, or an alien, until the three spy Goldi snoozing deeply in Wee Bear's bed. As they peer at her in alarm, she awakes with an "EEEEKKK!" and a couplet:

Pardon me if I don't stay...
Don't feel like jumping anyway!

While Mama Bear is too upset by the intrepid intruder to eat a bite of breakfast, Papa and Wee Little Bear tuck into their fresh oatmeal and "this time it was just right!"

If your preschooler doesn't own a copy of this famous cautionary tale on the temptations of trespass, this is the one to choose. (For one thing, in this version, Mama Bear's initial porridge is too hot, not too cold. It always seemed a violation of the law of thermodynamics that the big bowl and the little bowl were still too hot, but the middle-sized bowl was already cold! What's with that?)

As a first introduction to this story, Buehner's retelling has the virtue of sticking to the traditional folk plot faithfully while refreshing the dialog with simple but charming rhymes. The parent bears' lines are suitably stodgy, Goldilocks' lines are saucily insouciant, and Wee Bear's lines are creatively clueless: "A wild beast? A Monster? An Alien?" The drawings by Mark Buehner are jolly and clever and feature details that will delight kids from age two up. For example, as in other books by Buehner, a cat, a rabbit, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex are hidden in each illustration. Additionally, the drawings include "beary many" bear-related bric-a-brac in the background of the bears' cottage which are fun to spot even when Mom and Dad aren't around to read the story aloud.

For older readers, who like their tales a bit on the spoofy side, James Marshall's Goldilocks and the Three Bears is just right, featuring a bratty Goldie who gets humorously taken down a peg by some appropriately righteous bears.