Indovina che cosa succede, Una passeggiata invisible, is the title of the Italian edition of this delightfully playful wordless picture book.

Originally published in France under the title Devine qui fait quoi, it is also available in the UK from Floris Book under the title Whose Footprints Are These?

The book invites the reader to follow various sets of mysterious footprints that lead from a child’s bedroom, through to the kitchen and hall, and out to a crisp snowy landscape.

The footprints are not just those of the child and his friendly dog, but also of other birds and animals he meets along the journey, including a hungry horse.

The book is both a fun puzzle for the reader to de-code and also a way of helping children learn about the tracks of other creatures.

The illustrations give a real sense of a bright wintry day with a chilly nip in the air. And clues about who may have made the tracks are embedded in the pictures to help the reader identify each of the creatures.

For instance you see a couple of birds near the bird prints, and a duck on the pond near the duck’s webbed footprints.

Bigger human footprints can also be seen, such as near the wheelbarrow, enabling the reader to guess who else might be outside with the child, and what they might be doing.

Curious children who want to know more about the actual child – who we only glimpse in the final spread – can see him carrying out various activities on the endpapers, such as collecting a stick, carrying a plank of wood and making a boat. Always with his faithful hound beside him.

Gerda Muller (b.1926) was born in Naarden in the northern Netherlands. She studied first at the Fine Arts School of Amsterdam and later at L’école Estienne in Paris.

Her first book, The Good Day, was published by Père Castor in 1951, and she has since illustrated over 120 books for children.