Like a cottage quilt, rhythmic stanzas and vintage-style illustrations are stitched together with memories and love. Lyrical, not-quite-rhyming text tells the simple yet touching story of a girl with brown skin and straight, black hair who visits a special blue cottage every summer with her interracial family. Shared activities (waterskiing, beach play, and cycling) and meals (pancakes) convey the closeness in this family. In the summer, the girl escapes the warm cottage to play on the beach; during torrential storms, she hides within the cottage walls, peering out at the high whitecaps. The cottage, serving as a secondary character, awaits the girl's return each year, as well as the sights, sounds, and smells that accompany her visit. Alternating between vignettes and broad spreads, illustrations that recall the stylings of Virginia Lee Burton and Barbara Cooney have the texture and appearance of colored pencil. Muted earth tones dominate, and prints and patterns also adorn each thoughtfully composed spread, adding to the layered visual appeal of the book. Eventually the girl grows up and no longer visits, and the cottage falls into neglect, nearly disappearing into the surrounding vegetation. The book ends as it began, with a second multiracial generation returning to the little blue cottage, to restore its timeless splendor and build new memories. A story of a girl, a cottage, and a family tradition that begs to be visited again and again. (Picture book. 4-6) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Evoking Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House, this sweet story is told from the perspective of a blue bayside cottage. The narrative unfolds in rhythmic text, telling of a little mixed-race girl who spends summers at the cottage with her parents. The cottage watches the girl come, go, and grow over the years, always weathering the lonely seasons it sits empty with the comfort of knowing that the girl will return. Until one year she doesn't. The years roll by, and the saddened cottage fades and falls into disrepair, but it never gives up hope. Finally its patience is rewarded when the girl, herself a mother now, drives up with her own family to fix the cottage and bring life and love back to it. The vintage-style artwork is charming, offering heartwarming scenes of family life that mix single-page illustrations with horizontal strips that trace action or the passage of time. Occasional lapses in the text's meter and rhyme don't detract from the comforting lull of this story's perennial messages of love and home.

In blank verse, newcomer Jordan explores the bond between a girl and her seaside summer home: "They grew up together/ from summer to summer./ The little blue cottage. / The little bay girl." Jordan portrays the cottage as a character, a living being that rejoices when its humans return: "All year, the cottage waited for summer to return,/ and with it, the little girl." Courtney-Tickle paints the brown-skinned child swimming, fishing, and dreaming on a bedroom window seat next to a large round window: "You are my favorite place," she tells it. Her family, mixed-race and, eventually, multigenerational, is a loving presence, sitting around a kitchen table stacked with pancakes and surveying the ocean in rocking chairs. One year, though, they don't return. Readers may worry as trees and weeds grow tall through an unexplained absence, but all is ultimately well: "Gravel crunched under feet/ and the little cottage cried, 'At last!' " Retro spreads by Courtney-Tickle (The Perfectly Perfect Wish) portray the small blue house with a stumpy chimney and a porthole window; the cottage's personification adds a touch of magic to this ode to a beloved refuge. Ages 4--8. Author's agent: Stephanie Fretwell-Hill, Red Fox Literary. Illustrator's agent: Arabella Stein, the Bright Agency. (May)