Barn feels a chill. Her weather vane spins. She braces her beams. A snowstorm begins. Chambrae Griffith gives the barn herself the leading part, and the book is really about her holding steady while winter closes over the farm around her.

Taia Morley paints it in layered watercolor. The red barn stands in falling snow with a dog and a cow crossing the yard. Two small birds huddle together on a bare branch above a frozen lake while the last leaves swirl off, the cow's bell has gone silent, and the page asks where the cow has got to. Turn it and the barn is lit from the inside like a lantern: the farm dog asleep in the straw with his bone, the pig and the goat in the stall, the rooster settled by the door, and someone still coming in out of the snow as the doors open wide.

It is a big square padded board book, 8 inches on a side with 22 thick pages and a cushioned cover, made to be held flat on the floor by a toddler. Age guidance: 1 to 4. Two more from our Cottage Door Press shelf: First Christmas on the Farm and Winter in the Forest.