In Leo Lionni’s 1968 picture book Frederick, a family of field mice gathers grain for winter — all but one, who stares into space collecting sun rays, colors, and words. “Frederick, why don’t you work?” they ask. “I do work,” he answers, and when the food runs out he spends it: “Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice? / Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?” Lionni, a wartime refugee from Holland, wrote more than forty of these books; this one is still in print.