The mouse who once wanted a glass of milk with his cookie spends this book at the kitchen table with scissors and paper. He makes a valentine for every friend he has, and each card is designed around the specific thing he loves about that friend. Pig gets hers because she is a good dancer. Bunny gets his because he is the best at hide and seek. There is a surprise waiting at the end that gives the whole thing its punchline.

What makes it useful in February is that it teaches the holiday as a job rather than a haul. The book is a list of people and reasons, and a three year old who reads it usually wants paper straight afterwards, which is more than most seasonal picture books manage. Felicia Bond draws the same soft pencil and watercolor mouse the series has always had, at a scale a preschooler can follow across a page.

Twenty four board pages with squared off corners, sturdy enough to be handed round a classroom. It is one of the shortest routes into the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie world, and Little Blue Truck's Valentine is the other February book we keep beside it.