FORT-BUILDING TIME

A celebration of fort-building play throughout the year.

A diverse cast of children with different skin colors and hair textures builds forts with a wide variety of materials in winter, spring, summer, and fall. “WINTER is a…dog-snuggling, cocoa-drinking, snowman-making, fort-building time!” the book opens, and illustrations flesh out the action with said diverse characters and specific materials—in this case, an Asian boy skis past a white girl and a black girl playing near a snow fort festooned with evergreen garlands and pine cones hanging from red string. New fort-building materials are introduced with the changing seasons, and additional characters join in the play, but neither text nor illustrations ever develops a narrative. Instead, text and art simply depict the children’s fort-building activities (some quite spectacular) until the final pages depart from the seasonal structure and depict children grappling with a fort that falls apart and then needs rebuilding. “Every season has its own secret-dreaming, cozy-keeping, hush-listening, fort-building time,” reads the text that introduces those pages, perhaps inviting readers to dream up their own fort-building activities, no matter the season.

Playful reading fun.