MICE SKATING

When readers open up this book the first thing some of them will think is: “Is that real gold?”

This picture book seems to be flecked with gold. It might be a trick of the light, or a reflection on the page, but there appear to be golden sparks flickering around the fireplace and golden shoots sprouting in the fields. Gold highlights would destroy most picture books. They’d look gaudy or distracting, but the effect here is so subtle that it might be nothing but readers’ imaginations. Gold fits here: the other colors in the illustrations are soothing—they’re the natural greens of grass and trees and the pale orange of wood—but they don’t look quite real. The titular mice in the story look like geometric patterns rather than woodland creatures. And it’s beautiful. The colors glow. The story is comforting but very simple: Lucy wants to go ice skating, but her friends would rather stay indoors, until she knits them warm hats. The plot is so basic that some readers may skim over it and focus on the glowing colors, and that’s a perfectly sensible option, because the text is filled with terrible puns about cheese: “Your teeth are cheddar-ing!”

Some may flip through this book again and again, not even reading it, just enjoying the pictures and searching for gold