The North Wind & the Sun
by Philip Stead; illus. by the author
Preschool    Porter/Holiday    48 pp.
10/23    9780823455836    $18.99

In this retelling of an Aesop’s fable, three elderly sisters don their patched-up coats—yellow, blue, and red—and head out for a walk. The next two spreads are vertically oriented: readers turn the book to the right to see the depiction of the Sun shining with joy upon the women; in the next spread they turn it left to see the petulant North Wind. The Sun and North Wind agree to see which one can remove the sisters’ coats. The North Wind wreaks havoc, but the sisters, who hold fast to their coats throughout the onslaught, recognize the “lies,” “spitefulness,” “mockery,” “pity,” and “loneliness” inherent in his taunts. The gentle heat of the Sun, however, prompts the sisters to remove their coats. Stead writes with a spare and eloquent lyricism. He weaves a tender memory motif with the notion of threads—“memories began to unspool like brightly colored thread”—and the yellow, blue, and red both of the birds who leave and then return and of the sisters’ clothing. At one point, the sisters wave to the birds and “wove the sight into a memory to be kept for later.” Stead’s line work is beguiling: the scribbly North Wind conveys anger and chaos; scenes with the Sun contain delicate lines as well as warm, gentle hues in colored pencils. A moving and welcome retelling, like a breath of fresh air.

From the November/December 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.