LINES

A lone skater, pale-skinned and dark-haired in a red knit cap and mittens, swoops across the white expanse of each double-page spread in this wordless picture book that celebrates companionship and play.

At first reveling in solitary freedom, the figure flies across the ice, skates carving a symphony of lines in the surface with graceful spins, leaps, and turns. Eventually tumbling and crashing to the ground, the skater comes to a skidding halt. Next readers see a crumpled piece of paper, the little skater apparently no more than the figment of an artist’s imagination. But wait! The wad of paper is flattened out, and there’s the skater, alone and forlorn, on a smudged and wrinkled background, until another child comes along, then another and another. Soon the page is filled with joyful children of varying skin tones and hair colors—and even a bounding dog—skating and throwing snowballs on a pond surrounded by snow and trees. The deft pencil illustrations convey movement and emotion so effectively that words are superfluous.

Readers are transported into a wintry wonderland of exuberant bliss in this picture book that speaks to those who like to explore the boundaries of creative expression.