Whose footprints are these?

A mix of on-the-go footprints tell a quietly adventuresome story across a captivating winter landscape. Carefully communicated in gouache, colored pencil, and graphite, the wordless tale starts on the book's title page, with an image of a black-haired figure snuggled beneath a small bed's duvet. Turn the page and the figure is gone, leaving only prints, first of bare feet and then of sock-like shapes that venture through cozy but otherwise unpopulated domestic spaces, and then out into the snow, leaving the reader to rely on visual cues to provide the narrative, Family Circus--style. The snow-cloaked ground makes an ideal canvas for myriad markings as shoe and paw tracks traverse the wide expanse, crossing a stream, circling a pine, and heading back home, where a final scene shows a light-skinned child peeking from behind a boat-like fort. Endpapers sketch the child and dog at play, but Muller's conceit ably succeeds without figures or words, lending an air of mystery to a season-specific outing. Ages 3--6. (Oct.)

This playful wordless picture book invites children to deduce from the shape and placement of footprints what is happening. The title page gives just a glimpse of a dark-haired child in bed, but from that point on we see only where the child has gone, following their small footprints getting out of bed, switching to slippers, heading to the bathroom, and so on. Muller's gouache, colored-pencil, and graphite pictures show a European-style house, blending clean, organized surroundings with pops of color and pattern but leaving room for a small child's little messes as they move around. The child is joined by something with paw prints, whose identity is hinted at by a leash hanging near the door as the pair heads outside into the snow. There's something to enjoy or wonder about on each double-page spread, such as the paw prints going around in circles, or the addition of a puddle of yellow in the snow after they have stopped by a tree; we also see others -- birds, a horse, a duck, etc. -- each with their own distinctive prints. Humor and imagination have free rein in this cozy and engrossing book. Susan Dove Lempke September/October 2022 p.66(c) Copyright 2022. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.