Two Little Red Mittens
by Kirin Hayashi; illus. by Chiaki Okada; trans. from Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa
Preschool, Primary    Amazon Crossing Kids    40 pp.
10/24    9781662516764    $17.99

Little One’s red wool mittens promise each other “to keep those tiny fingers toasty warm tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.” One day Little One loses the right-hand one, and this homey tale follows the mitten as it’s found and lost again and again. A kind fox picks up the red mitten on a snowy path and hangs it on a bush, hoping its owner sees it. That night, a blizzard blows the mitten under a tree, where a mother rabbit finds it and brings it home to use as “the perfect tea cozy.” (Back at home, Little One and her mother search, “but it was no use.”) The rabbit twins decide it’s a nightcap and sleep soundly with it “over both their heads at once.” Later, some greedy mice take the mitten, now starting to show wear, to use as a sleep sack; the trio’s bickering eventually leads to them losing the mitten as well. Hayashi’s gentle story authentically taps into a young child’s vivid imagination. The narrative’s nicely balanced tension holds readers’ interest without stoking up worries—there’s a sense that all will be well. Okada’s soft illustrations, rendered in pencil and colored pencils, perfectly match the tale’s old-fashioned sensibility and quiet winter setting. The left mitten, meanwhile, is working with a new partner but still wonders “if everything’s all right” with the lost right. It is, and while the sweet, heartfelt ending doesn’t reunite the mittens, it gives them and listeners satisfying closure.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.