Acclaimed British children's author and artist Shirley Hughes presents a selection of poetry and prose in this winter-time collection, with text accompanied by her atmospheric illustrations. The nine selections here include six poems and three stories, one of them wordless.

The book kicks off with "Wild Weather," a brief poem about the coming of winter, and more stormy weather.

Next is "Sea Singing", the tale of a young girl who has been sent to stay on the Scottish coast with a friend of her mother's, following an illness. After hearing singing from the sea, she is told a traditional tale of a selkie, or seal woman.

"Late Song" is a rather spooky poem about an old man (perhaps a tramp?) passing in the late afternoon one wintry day.

In "Mrs. Toomly Stones" we see the chills and thrills experienced by a local child, when considering an old house in the neighborhood that stands empty, and which he imagines is owned by the eponymous Mrs. Toomly Stones.

The rather surreal, and entirely wordless short story, "A Midwinter Night's Dream," follows a young boy as he rises from his bed one night, heads down to the basement, and falls into an enchanted subterranean world. After his adventures, in which he sees very little of the magic he is passing, he winds up back in his bedroom...

Inside the Inn is the first Christmas selection, and is a brief poem that juxtaposes a contemporary British pub with the inn at Bethlehem where (in both cases) there is no room for a wandering couple in need of shelter.

A second Christmas poem is included, in the form of "First Light," which imagines that of the shepherds given the news of Jesus' birth so long ago - the news that "God had come to live with them below" - a young boy would have been the first amongst them to hear.

The third and final Christmas selection, and the longest piece in the book, is Burning the Tree, which explores young William's relationship with his Grandpa, who has just recently come to live with his family, after the death of William's Gran. Issues of loss and grief, and of healing and love, are sensitively explored as boy and man work together to burn their family's Christmas tree, after it has been taken down.

The final selection is "Coming Soon," a brief poem heralding the coming of the much-awaited Spring...

I enjoyed this Stories by Firelight, although perhaps not quite as much as I had expected to, given my love for the season. That said, I do appreciate the way that Hughes intermingled the ordinary and the enchanted here, in these pieces, and I found many of her illustrations quite striking. She mentioned, in a tiny postscript, that the artwork for "A Midwinter Night's Dream" was inspired by the carvings on medieval buildings found in Bologna, Moissac, Sherborne, Verona and San Quirico D'Orcia, which I found interesting. Of the nine selections, my favorite was undoubtedly "Sea Singing", but then, I do love selkie stories. Recommended to Hughes fans, and to anyone looking for an engaging collection of stories and poems about the coming and the passing of Winter. ( )