Book excerpt: A Cheer for the Year offers a poetic calendar of holiday treats, the feeling you get when a friend presses a box of decadent chocolates in your hands, and you didn't even know that's what you were missing. Author/poet Raven Howell lights sparklers, flips pancakes and dances us merrily through the year while illustrator Meredith Fern's paper cut-outs create the friendly, imaginative, and expressive home for each verse.