December 21st is the shortest day of the year, a very dark night perfect for story telling, or for curling up with a good book. The poem ‘Picture-Books in Winter’ from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses (Oldham 679) might provide the perfect reading.

This 1927 edition, from the Oldham collection of Children’s Books, is beautifully illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, keeping this children’s classic from 1885 alive for a new generation to discover.