Winter Books

Since Advent and my church's celebration of Winter Solstice, I've been thinking about how we make it through the winter. Unlike the other seasons, which are celebrated in their own right, winter seems to be a lot about how to make it through.

Many of the stories we read have this idea too, that the hopeful seed of spring is buried in winter. In Dear Rebecca, Winter Is Here, the grandmother writes that summer begins on December 21, as the little hands of light begin bringing back longer days. We're also reading Leo Lionni's Frederick, about a mouse who stores up the sunlight and colors of warmer seasons to sustain his family's spirit with poetry in the dark cold days ahead. What I love about Frederick is how, at the beginning of winter, the mouse family has plenty of fun and excitement to distract them. This is just how I feel in December with all the holidays. It's harder in January when a deeper cold sets in and there are no distracting festivals.

Then there are the books that celebrate winter. My current favorite is Stranger in the Woods. It's a picture book told in wildlife photographs. It's all snowy woods and lace-like tree branches loaded with even more sugary snow. There are owls, mice, and deer, but my favorite is the cardinal, who announces, "But... I am... I am... RED!" And his red feathers are splendid in the photography. The sense of winter in this book is everything I hope to show Ladybug when we visit the farm on winter days.

Another book we've been reading is Owl Moon, which reads like a prose poem told in a child's voice. We're in the snowy woods again, but now at night, well past bedtime. The setting is unflinchingly cold, still and silent. Reading it you feel that the dark winter is sacred. My favorite lines are from the last page:

When you go owling
you don't need words
or warm
or anything but hope.
That's what Pa says.
The kind of hope
that flies
on silent wings
under a shining
Owl Moon.