A gently rocking rhymed text takes the voice of a girl who misses her father. In a 19th-century Cape Cod village, she muses on how long a year can seem, while her father plies the China trade and she and her mother live their lives and raise her baby brother. As the baby learns to walk and then to speak, the seasons turn, summer to autumn to winter, until finally in spring Papa returns. The pictures, pencil and watercolor, finished with Photoshop, take the blues and greens of the sea and trace them in walls, quilts, clothing and sky. The cool watery tones match the lulling sound of the verse quite effectively, though the latter occasionally stumbles as it reaches to meet the meter. A four-word glossary—China trade, chops, teak and willowware—calls attention to itself with its brevity. (Picture book. 4-8)
