Hedgie the hedgehog has a problem. Winter is coming, which means months underground, and everyone on the farm keeps describing what he is about to sleep through. Icicles hanging off the chicken coop. Lisa building snowmen. The pond gone hard and slippery. So Hedgie decides he simply will not hibernate this year.

Then the storm arrives, and the book turns from comedy into something warmer: Lisa finds him, carries him inside, and Hedgie gets to watch the whole snowy world from the window of a lit farmhouse. It is a small, generous ending, and children ask for it again immediately.

Jan Brett's readers know what they are here for. Every spread is framed with her signature illustrated borders, and the borders are running their own parallel story, so a child who has heard the words a hundred times is still finding something new in the margins. Her Scandinavian farm interiors are painted with the density of a museum piece.

From the creator of The Mitten, The Animals' Santa and The Three Snow Bears. A large format hardcover that reads aloud well and looks like an heirloom on the shelf after the first winter.

Hedgie's first outing is here in board too: The Hat: Oversized Lap Board Book, the one where a woolen stocking gets stuck on his prickles. The Christmas title from the same shelf is Gingerbread Christmas.

For another winter story from the same illustrator, The Christmas Sweater follows a boy and a pug into deep snow on Christmas morning, with the answer drawn into the borders before the story reaches it.