A monologue, spoken in a mountain dialect by ""myself, Jimmy Jack Blackburn,"" about the cold in the cabin, the wind ""whining and scratching at the cracks in the house,"" and his resolve--after several pages of such talk--to go up on the hill, small as he is (about seven, it appears) and dig some coal from an old hole. . . which at further length, he does. Then he's back in the cabin, the coal is on the fire; he goes up to get some more (speaking, each time, ""to the rock-rock, since it seems a nice thing to do""); and the next morning, when he finds the roof-rock fallen and the coal bank gone, the sky is clear too, and some firewood is at hand. ""We be toasty warm,"" he concludes, ""till springtime comes."" Ponderous, static atmospherics, with heavy painterly illustrations that look like John Steuart Curry reproduced in black-and-white--a miss for the picture-book audience altogether.