THE JACKET I WEAR IN THE SNOW

To anyone who has taken care of a snowy climate, this will be hilariously, or painfully, familiar: because her scarf gets stuck in her zipper, the small protagonist is trapped by her entire, now hot, itchy, and uncomfortable, wardrobe. With a stroke of near-genius, Neitzel describes the problem in a ""House That Jack Built"" sort of cumulation that perfectly reflects the child's mounting misery, while Parker's wonderfully simple illustrations include rebuses for the offending garments (""These are the boots, too big for me, that cover the [jeans] stiff in the knee, that go over the [sweater] all itchy and warm. . .""). At last, Mother comes to disentangle the tot from her sled, wipe the tears, and conduct an unwrapping that rei+terates the cumulation one more time, in reverse. Parker augments the story with a playful cat and a cozy concluding scene. Nifty.