TWINKLE, TWINKLE, WINTER NIGHT

A sky spangled with stars lights up snowy scenes in this celebration of winter holidays.

Casting her verses in the cadences of a familiar nursery rhyme, Litwin catalogs sources of illumination beginning with the stars—“In the quiet, calm, and clear— // sky sparkles like a chandelier.” She moves on from “quiet wood / to busy town,” the latter a village decked in festive strings and displays of lights, before finishing by sending readers “off to cozy beds to sleep.” In illustrations that are hazily aglow with natural and artificial lights, Myers follows suit by sending an adult and a child, both brown-skinned, on a walk through woods to a skating rink, then into a town square in which racially diverse residents can be seen chatting or singing carols, and on past a big hanging star and houses and stores lit with Kwanzaa candles, a menorah, a stylized Diwali lamp, and other seasonal symbols. At last, following a glimpse of two olive-skinned children leaving a plate of cookies next to their fireplace before bedding down, faces peering out of windows take final glances at the stars together. The snow and heavy dress indicate a setting in the Northern Hemisphere, but even if some of the imagery is oblique, at least an effort has been made to be inclusive without any prioritization or even mention of a specific holiday. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Suitable for bedtime reading in any season, rich in both visual and sonic resonances.