Welcome the Changing Seasons With These 5 Children’s Books About Winter

The various shades of blue used in this beautiful picture book embody the icy, wintry feel of winter. The narrator, who is a wheelchair user, doesn’t want to go to an ice festival with her mother. Bringing her toy horse, and bundled up into layers, the two go anyway. They watch ice sculptors work on their blocks of ice, drink hot chocolate, and return home. Too late the child notices that she left the toy horse there! The two return to the festival the next night, and the child can’t help but smile at the beautiful ice sculptures. But can she find her horse? This is such a unique and beautiful picture book, and I love the illustrations of the wheelchair, like when the mom buckles the child into the car. The author/illustrator also uses a wheelchair.

This gentle, rhyming homage to snow follows a child from waking up to bedtime, defining what snow is. A child wakes up to a wintry world and immediately feels excited about the day to come. With family and a pet dog, the child catches snowflakes with their tongue, has snowball fights, sleds, builds a snowman, and all the classic snowy day fun. The lilting verse and warm, lovely illustrations make this stand out from other, similar picture book celebrations of snow.

This is the third book in the adorable The Adventures of Penguin and Panda early reader graphic novel series, but they can be read in any order. Penguin and Panda have very different personalities. Panda is easy going and likes to go with the flow. Penguin is high energy with lots of ideas. Their differences don’t stop them from being the best of friends. In four interconnected stories, Penguin and Panda raise money to buy a Christmas tree by helping out around town, conquer fears to participate in winter sports fun, find the perfect new sweater, and attempt to have the perfect holiday prep day. My six-year-old loves this series. It’s such a sweet and funny take on friendship.

This magical middle grade is like Practical Magic, but starring 13- and 14-year-olds. Every year on the winter solstice, people who visit the Ambrose Ensorcelled Cottage and make eye contact fall in love. The cottage is run by enchantresses, and 13-year-old Alice is one of their daughters. She desperately wants her mother to fall in love with her biological father, but when he visits on the solstice and looks her mother directly in the eyes, nothing happens. Alice later learns her family is cursed to never fall in love. Fourteen-year-old Ronan is visiting the town with his mother, who refuses to settle anywhere longer than a week. Ronan can see and speak to ghosts. His greatest wish is to settle down. He’s tired of moving from place to place and thinks the special magic in this small town might be the lure his mother needs to settle down. He just needs her to fall in love with someone there to seal the deal. This is a charming winter story perfect for kids interested in love and romance.