Where Do They Go?: Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner

OVER THE SNOW I GLIDE.

INTO THE WOODS.

As a boy and his dad ski into the winter woods, the boy's eye catches a flash of color as a red squirrel suddenly zips from sight.

"WHERE DID HE GO?"

"UNDER THE SNOW," DAD SAYS.

Dad tells the boy that many animals keep food stores under the snow, like the red squirrel, who can forage for the scent of nuts and berries he has stored in the space between the slightly melted snow and the cold ground below. And he's not the only creature to make use of that cold locker. Rabbits and hares also visit their secret safe under the snow-- and voles, deer mice, shrews, and ground squirrels have their own larders of nuts and fruit with rinds. Some sleep most of the time in semi-hibernation. They snooze in underground nests and tunnels, where they can wake to eat from time to time from their goodies or sleep long days to conserve their internal fat stores.

As the boy glides up the hills and down, he also sees the wakeful predators, watching for any sign of an animal above the snow. Foxes and owls pounce powerfully if their sharp ears detect a sound from below the snow.

Dad shows him where the sharp hooves of deer leave their tracks behind in the snow.

UNDER THE SNOW THE FAT BULLFROGS SLEEP, DREAMING OF WHEN THEY HAD TAILS.

And down below the snow, beavers in their dens dine on carefully selected supplies of pinecones and bark in their warm dining rooms with a view of the water.

In what seems like a cold and deserted landscape as father and son ski through, forest animals are living in places hidden and unseen, finding food in the frozen stillness of winter, in Kate Messner's Over and Under the Snow.

There is much to learn from the careful ways of animals in winter in this primary lesson on animal behavior and survival in Messner's pleasantly plotted book. Artist Christopher Silas Neal's craftily rendered illustrations display the double levels of life in the winter woodlands, useful for meeting the requirements of the animal science curriculum for the primary grades.

"Beautifully rendered," writes Horn Book Magazine in a starred review.

Follow the Winter Trail: Winter Wonderland by Dawn Sirett

FOLLOW THE SPARKLING, SNOWY TRAILS!

An emperor penguin lives in a cold place called Antarctica.

With loops, swirls, zigzags, and familiar shapes, Follow the Trail: Winter Wonderland (Dorling Kindersley, 2017) entices youngsters with assisting adults to trace the track to lead the fluffy penguin chick where he needs to learn to go--down a snowy slope to slide into the sea for his first swimming lesson, along the way providing lessons in penguin parenting styles.

But what's that in the die-cut opening at the top of the page?

It's an Arctic fox, and it is time to trace the fox kits, whose coats turn white in winter to conceal them in their snowy landscapes. Youngsters are encouraged to use their fingers to trace the lumpy, bumpy, glittery, and shiny trails that deliver the young foxes, polar bears, and reindeer who need to learn where and what to do in winter. Plenty of tactile and visual experiences are to be found in this third title in DK's Follow the Trail series, even offering an exit exam in which young readers follow the correct trail to each animal's destination, whether it be the sea, the bears' cave, the foxes' den--or the reindeers' mossy grazing grounds--and perhaps a place with a sleigh that needs pulling?

Others in this charming board book series include Follow the Trail: Farm, Follow the Trail: Trucks, (DK Follow the Trail) Follow the Trail: Baby Animals, Follow the Trail: Baby Dinosaurs, and Follow the Trail: Bugs for preschoolers on the grow and on the go.

Winter Doesn't Last Forever! Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman

Nature has taught all of its creatures how to cope with the coming of winter. The ectotherms, cold-blooded reptiles like the garter snake, are among the first to sense the earth's turning:

BROTHER, SISTER, FLICK YOUR TONGUE
AND TASTE THE FLICKS OF AUTUMN SUN.
BEFORE YOUR COILS GROW STIFF AND DULL,
YOUR HEARTBEAT SLOWS TO WINTER'S LULL,

SEEK THE SINK OF SHELTERED STONES
THAT SAFELY CRADLE SLEEPING BONES.


As winter comes, even the wings of swans know what to do:

DUSK FELL
THAT NIGHT WE DREAMED THE JOURNEY:
WE DREAMED OURSELVES SO FAR ALOFT
THAT THE EARTH CURVED BENEATH US.

Snakes hibernate together, huddled in coiled communities of hundreds or thousands underground, and birds fly to comforting climes. Moose switch to a diet of twigs and shoots, and bees squeeze together in a "sizzling ball ... like a golden sun." Beavers winter in wigwams of sticks and mud, sending a youngster forth for takeout from the cached twigs and branches stored nearby, and wolves and ravens travel together, the birds sounding an alert that prey is near, even pecking at the wolves' tails to rouse them, and the wolves doing the work of making the kill for both of them.

Newbery-winning poet Joyce Sidman's latest, Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), turns her considerable poetic skills to colder climes and times. Foxes, voles, chickadees, even snow fleas, all have their ways of wintering and readying themselves to spring into spring. Sidman's specialty is lyrical language, set in varied verse forms, that can enchant even the most reluctant poetry reader with its cleverness, beauty, and insight into the natural world. Rick Allen's appealing artwork, lovely double-page spreads in wintry palette, set off Sidman's rhymes and add movement and accurate portrayal of the animals and plants, even the stinky skunk cabbage, first in spring to pierce the snow cover, in its wintry world. Informational passages on each spread add additional knowledge to Sidman's poetic text, and an appended glossary provides definitions of vocabulary used in the text, all making this slim volume the best poetry of the year.

As Sidman's chicadees sing...

QUICK AND BOLD AND BRAVE AND CLEVER,
WE PREEN AND FLUFF EACH DOWNY FEATHER.
SING FEE-BEE--LAUGH AT THE WEATHER--
FOR WINTER DOESN'T LAST FOREVER!