Winter to Spring

The Cold Water Witch by Yannick Murphy, illustrated by Tom Lintern, Random House, 2010    (review copy provided by publisher)

Part Snow Queen, part Hansel and Gretel, an icy stranger tries to entice a little girl to come with her to a land of ice and snow, with the promise that the child can be a princess there.  Wisely, the child refuses. The stranger is revealed as the Cold Water Witch who is looking for a little girl to take her place in the realm of cold.  The little girl's wariness and patience saves the "witch" and earns her a new friend. Murphy's little girl is a wise child who thinks before she acts.  I like Lintern's work.  I wish his Tooth Fairy Metts El Raton Perez had been selected for the Texas 2x2 list.  His frosty color palate is full of lavenders and icy blues here. 


Ten on the Sled by Kim Norman, illustrated by Liza Woodruff, Sterling, 2010
(review copy provided by publisher)

Patterned the preschool song "There Were Ten In The Bed", a group of 10 disparate animals pull a sled up a hill and take a wild ride down, falling off, one by one.  This is a nice "count down" book with alliterative exits for each animal, the hare hopped off, the walrus whirled out, the sheep shot out, the wolf wiped out etc.

Liza Woodruff has suggested the Northern Lights in the sky on the cover as Norman sets the story "on a sunlit night, 'neath a snowy moon."


Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit: a book of changing seasons by Il Sung Na, Knopf, 2010  (review copy provided by publisher)

The copyright/edition page describes the illustrations for this book as a combination of "handmade painterly textures with digitally generated layers, which were then compiled in Adobe Photoshop." The effect is like an elegant and exquisite digital batik of color and texture and shadows.Some of these illustrations cry out for interpretation in real batik fabric in quilt blocks.

The reader sees animals migrating, hibernating and burrowing beneath the earth when winter arrives.  The rabbit on the cover has white fur in the winter but turns to shades of brown when spring arrives.