Swimsuits, snorkel masks, beach umbrellas, pool floats, sunflowers and fireworks. More than forty things a child associates with the middle of July, each one reduced to a handful of numbered steps.

The snorkel mask page shows how the book thinks. One wavy line becomes a mask outline, then strap tabs, then a lens and a tube, and by step six it reads as a snorkel mask before the child has quite worked out how that happened. The umbrella page runs the same six steps from a straight pole and a flat ellipse to a scalloped beach umbrella standing in the sand. Alli Koch keeps every project inside five minutes because a child’s attention is the material she is really working with.

Take it wherever the summer goes. The publisher describes the paper as thick and sturdy, the binding lies flat on a picnic table, and a finished page comes away along its perforation.

Paperback with lay flat binding, 80 pages, 9 by 9 in, with foil on the cover. Paige Tate & Co., 6 May 2025. ISBN-13 9781963183290. Publisher age guidance is 7 to 12, and it says children from about five follow along with help.

Start the year with Spring Things End it with Fall Things Or the five book box set instead