Here are our Top 10 Winter Books for Children. These are our tried-and-true, beloved “read-it-again” books. Many are inexpensive paperbacks, and you might even find some at your local library or used bookstore. I needn’t rank them, I think. If you do delve into any of these with your children, please comment here and tell me what you think. Also, please tell me if you have other favorite winter books to share!

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a classic. You probably read it when you were a child. Have you seen this book lately? The simple text beautifully describes a sweet day of snow play and all of the experiences of snowy weather that would appeal to young children. The boy, Peter, pays attention to his footprints, finds a just-right stick, makes snow angels, pretends, and tries to keep a snowball in his pocket. When he comes inside, his mama helps him take off his wet socks. Sound familiar?

Snow by Cynthia Rylant gently reminds us that playing outside among the drifts and snowflakes and then being snug and warm at home are the great gifts of snow. Others are angels, new friends, and the reminder that only memories last forever. “It will say that it is all right to be happy.” I like books that say that we can be happy in simple things, such as tumbling down a hill or taking a walk to see how beautiful the world is. Underneath all this lovely snow, the flowers are sleeping and the soft green gardens wait.

When Winter Comes by Nancy Van Laan answers some very good questions about how birds and animals adapt to winter’s cold temperatures. Chances are good that your children have asked these exact questions of you at some time. The language is lyrical and rhyming. A mommy, daddy, and child explore nature together to find out what happens “when winter comes and the cold winds blow.” I feel this book models how you can enjoy nature outdoors even when it’s cold and dark in winter.

This one we don’t own, but we are greatly enjoying our library copy. Animals in Winter, by Henrietta Bancroft and Richard G. Van Gelder, explains in simple language what the birds, butterflies, bats, woodchuck, pikas, squirrels, mice, deer, rabbits, and foxes do to survive the cold season of winter. The authors deftly explain the concepts of migration, hibernation, food storage, foraging, and hunting as survival techniques. The book also tells you how you can help birds find enough food in winter by building bird feeders and keeping them supplied with seeds, nuts, and fruits.

Another science-oriented library book that nevertheless is filled with wonder at the beauty inherent in snow crystals is The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder by Mark Cassino and Jon Nelson, Ph.D. There are several amazing snow crystal photography books on the market, but this one does the best job of explaining to children how snow crystals form. The macro photography is beautiful and your child may gasp with delight upon seeing the intricate shapes that snow crystals form in nature. These photos make my heart soar.

The Tomten is a perennial favorite. We have a beat-up old paperback copy that we read again and again. This book was adapted by Astrid Lindgren from a poem by Viktor Rydberg and has a delightfully slow pace. Not much happens, and what does happens in a repetitious and comforting way, just the kind of simple rhythm that young children respond to so well. A Tomten takes care of the animals of the farm during the dead of night, when everyone is sleeping and no one can see him. No one has ever seen him, but they know he is there. He whispers to the cows in tomten language, “Winters come and winters go, Summers come and summers go, Soon you can graze in the fields.” He has a similarly reassuring message for the horses, the sheep, and the chickens. He is a special friend of the dog. He wishes the children were awake so he could talk to them, too, in tomten language that they can understand, but of course children sleep through the night.

Sybille von Olfers is a favorite among Waldorf-oriented families for good reasons. The Snow Children is the story of Poppy, who goes to play outside when her mother is running an errand away from home. She meets the snow children, who happily take her to visit the Snow Queen. She travels through the snowy woods to the Queen’s ice castle on a sledge pulled by Swirly-Wind. She meets the Snow Queen and the Princess, and gets to join in her birthday celebration featuring white chocolate and sweet ice-cold tea. After a fine time, Poppy is ready to return home to her mother, and eagerly tells her all about her adventures.

Winter Waits by Lynn Plourde is part of her series of seasonal books, all of which are illustrated by Greg Couch. In this story, Winter is personified as a rambunctious little boy who tries to get his dad, Father Time, to play with him. Unfortunately, Dad is working. While he waits, Winter paints the grass with frost and makes the world sparkle with white. Dad asks him to be patient a bit more. In the meantime, Winter carves ice sculptures out of mountain waterfalls. He wants to show Father Time his creation, but the father’s work still isn’t done. So the boy cuts intricate snowflakes and sprinkles them about. Finally, when presented with the miracle gift of a snowflake, Father says, “Thank you, my son, you fill me with pride.” And then they play, play, play together in that special way that fathers and sons do. This story captures that excruciating waiting that so often accompanies childhood, the exuberance that comes when the wait is finally over, and the special bond between fathers and sons.

Grandmother Winter by Phyllis Root is a magical tale about an old woman who keeps a flock of geese. All through the spring and summer, Grandmother Winter carefully gathers the goose feathers that the birds drop. In the autumn, she begins to sew a quilt and fills it with feathers. Grandmother shakes out her finished quilt and causes the snowflakes to begin to fall. Children catch the flakes on their tongues and grown-ups stack the firewood high, and the animals get ready to slumber under the mud of the pond or in their cozy dens. She climbs into bed under her new quilt—fine as a blanket of snow—to stay warm through the winter, and her geese tuck their heads under their wings to wait for spring. I adore the artwork by Beth Krommes.

Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr are three Swedish boys in a series of books by Maj Lindman. Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the The Yellow Sled is a gentle story that my sons love. The brothers see a fancy yellow sled in a shop window and ask their mother if they can earn the money to buy the sled, which they can all ride at the same time. Mother agrees and gives them special chores to do to earn the money. The boys go about their tasks cheerfully—washing dishes, helping with the cooking, doing laundry and the shopping, and scrubbing and dusting the house—just as you want your own children to do. They even bring Mother tea, flowers, and cake on her birthday. After two weeks, Mother agrees to take them to the shop to buy the sled. When they arrive there, they see a little boy who also dearly desires to have the yellow sled, but whose family cannot afford it. The boys agree to give the yellow sled they have earned to the less fortunate boy, and they make him and his siblings so happy in doing so. Mother is pleased with their generosity and agrees to let Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr earn another yellow sled for themselves. I love the example these brothers set with their helpfulness and generosity.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Last night we celebrated Chinese New Year or the Lunar New Year. It was the first time for us, and it was a bit last-minute, but we had enough red construction paper on hand to make it fun.

We made these sweet and simple paper lanterns and lit candles. They were very festive. I did some reading about Chinese paper cutting arts and watched a couple of YouTube videos (like this simple tutorial). I didn’t know about this beautiful art form before. Go to Google and search for “Chinese paper cutting” and then click “Images.” The examples you’ll see there are amazing. I fell in love.

These are just two examples I found and I’m sorry I can’t credit the artists who made them. This year is the Year of the Dragon, but you already know that.

So while Daddy made us a gorgeous chicken and stir-fried vegetable dinner over brown rice, we started cutting. Our paper lanterns glowed merrily beside us.

To make this yourself, simply trim your paper into a square, fold in half and fold in half again. Now fold it into a triangle, just like you would if you were making a paper snowflake. Now begin cutting. Chevrons, parallel lines, swirls, squares, triangles, hearts, diamonds, etc. are all good shapes to cut. When you are finished cutting, simply unfold your paper. Voila!

It is always such a delight when the children decide to go along with one of my harebrained crafting schemes. Lucas and I both enjoyed this “paper flower” making a lot and we decided to make enough  flags to create a banner. We made seven square flags.

Lucas also made his own good luck envelope and filled it with an origami swan, some coins, and a blessing. He used his special fountain pen that he got from Santa. It seems he knows rather more about Chinese New Year than I realized, with some cultural mixing at play.

Asher helped a bit, too, but he doesn’t like to be told how to make things. Mostly he wants a chance to use the scissors. To make our banner, we just threaded a piece of red yarn through the holes along the top of each flag.

And this is how our lucky banner looks this morning, hanging near our kitchen. I think it looks terrific and feel that it’s going to do great double duty for Valentine’s Day, too. I can’t help but cut hearts, I guess. (Now I see I’d better cut that extra long piece of yarn.)

I think I’m going to try making some “window flowers” out of translucent red kite paper. Maybe I can try making one that isn’t symmetrical, as most examples I see from this Chinese art form are not. I’ll let you know how that goes. Also, I found that you can buy pieces of Chinese paper art on Amazon.com if you want something authentic.

Oh, the colors! This was the gorgeous sunset that foretold the rain that we are currently enjoying. My garden is soaking in all the sweet, long overdue raindrops.

It is Friday and my little one is napping. Soon, we’ll go get his brother from school and then I hope to pull them close, build a fire in our fireplace, and force them to drink hot cocoa with me and Solstice in a big pile of blankets.

Happy Family Days, everyone! Drop me a line and let me know how you’ll be staying warm this weekend.

Monday morning. The boys went back to school today after a two-week winter vacation. Suddenly the house is quiet and the little dog is wandering around. He’s gone back to Asher’s bed to snooze five times now.

It has been a marvelous two weeks. Plenty of rest and play, plenty of knitting and painting and gardening, plenty of little brown dog.  We have also had plenty of bickering, having to share, and learning how to get along and what to do/not do when you’re not getting along. Although this part isn’t sweet and peaceful and the stuff of most blogs, it’s also important family work.

Lucas bravely walked out the door this morning with all his fourth-grade animal report and two eager helpers (Daddy and Asher) to carry it all. It is a paper report, a 16 by 20 acrylic painting and a diorama of the fennec fox in its habitat. It turns out the report is actually due tomorrow, but I think he’s so happy and relieved to have it done.

For his diorama he used brown paper (which came to us in a package as packing material) to simulate desert sand dunes of the Sahara Desert in Africa and a fennec fox burrow. He sprayed the paper with spray adhesive and then carefully sprinkled sand over the whole thing and a little bit of sawdust. The fennec foxes are made from Sculpey clay and painted with craft acrylics. More (unbaked) Sculpey clay and some grasses complete the environment. I think it looks great!

This weekend we did a lot of project work and also quite a bit of household reorganization. We weeded out some books for the used book store and Ian tackled the craft/game closet and reorganized it. It’s lovely that he did that because I sometimes have a hard time letting go of things “that we might someday need.” My office needs the same kind of attention. I worked in the garden a bit, pruning the roses and other shrubs, watering, etc. We’re having such a warm winter (I guess to balance our cool 2011 summer?) that I’ve had to water. No rains have come yet and we have roses blooming in January. I have some more planting to do and hope to pick up a few bare-root roses that typically appear in the shops this time of year.

I’m starting a new work project today. The timing couldn’t be better. The quiet of today feels blissful. I can hear myself think again.

“Saint Giles, His Bells,” watercolor by Charles Altamont Doyle

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow;

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out the want, the care the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Midwinter’s Eve

In the darkness of the winter
In the stillness of the night
We are searching the horizon
For the first rays of light

The owl flies by in silence
As the fox lifts up an ear
To hear the North wind cry out
At the birth of the new year

Though the earth below is frozen
Search beneath for hidden spring
Cup your hands
Drink the water
In communion with all things
—Claudia Chapman

May all be warm and merry on this Solstice night. May we find the light within each other and ourselves. Blessed be.

This is my mantel for Christmas. Although I don’t buy new decorations every year, I do try to think of new ways to display them. I’m pretty happy with this one; it’s simple and sweet and repurposes some old items in a new way. In front of this hearth is where my children draw and play with Legos nearly every day.

I used an old store-bought (plastic?) garland of “greenery” and added our collection of Waldorf woolen angels. I think we’ve received one wool angel per year for the last six years or so. They didn’t go up on our tree this year because our tree is smaller than usual. But I couldn’t not put them out. I think they look terrific in a group this way.

I indulged in buying one new Christmas decoration this year: a box of 15 straw star ornaments for $7.99. I adore them. They are so intricate and pretty, and look just right here.

The truth is I have materials for making such straw star ornaments, which are a traditional German Christmas decoration, but I haven’t had time to sit down and try to figure out how. I have a package of natural color straw and red straw. I have gold thread and red thread for tying off intersections in the stars. I secretly hope to have a few free hours to play with this, however, I admit I’m doubting I will. It looks really hard to me.

This is the nativity scene that my grandmother bought me about ten years ago. It’s porcelain and fancy and very colorful and, although I never would have bought it,  I love it. Each year when I unwrap it, I say a silent prayer and hope that we don’t accidentally break it. After Christmas I carefully pack it back into the original box in the hopes that it will be safe another year. It is sitting on a cloth I wove myself.

These are my “Waldorf” resin angels. I bought them at a craft fair a few years back for $6 each. I call them Waldorf because they are faceless. In the vase are dried daylily stems from my garden. I collect them as they dry out because they’re interesting to me and I’m always trying to use found natural items in my crafting. Ian thinks I’m nuts because I save these, especially as I usually don’t have any idea how I’m going to use them. The group on the right is still merely rubberbanded together. I like that they are so tall and so bleached out.

Today I saw a blog with the most amazing Christmas decorations I have ever seen. The home that was featured was so exquisitely beautiful it looked like a whole team of stylists were on staff full-time and that no one lived there at all. There wasn’t a single item out of place or bit of evidence that a child even walked through. It was glitzy and glamorous and completely soulless. It also looked like entire villages of people could be fed for months on what was spent to decorate that home, and that realization made me feel rather ill. Frankly, it was obscene—a word I don’t use lightly. That display of wealth and glitter made me feel so weird and conflicted that I almost didn’t write this post about my nifty mantel that I hodgepodged together. I mean, isn’t this the same kind of thing on a “poor-girl” scale?

Aesthetics are highly individual. Surrounding ourselves with art and beauty is one of the pleasures of life. Doing so lifts my spirits and helps me to feel like I’m raising children in a happy, intentional home. The creation of and appreciation for art is a celebration of our humanness, one of the crowing jewels of humanity. I don’t need or desire to be judgmental about the way that other people express themselves. I just know that if I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be using it that way. I’d be feeding people.

I don’t own this little treasure, Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, by Julia Rawlinson, but I will someday. This sweet book is one I discovered because I enjoy the illustrations of Tiphanie Beeke, who illustrated The Stars Will Still Shine, by Cynthia Rylant, a book I wrote about a while ago here.

Rawlinson has created a touching story of a little fox named Fletcher (Ferdie in the UK) who has a favorite tree. When the autumn weather comes and the tree begins to lose leaves, Fletcher becomes worried and tries to help his friend keep its leaves.

Each day, more and more leaves turn brown and flutter down to the ground.

This painting is marvelous, full of movement and emotion. This is rather what winter looks like to me, as we get no snow where we live. The autumn leaves hang onto the trees well into December until eventually the winds and the rains knock them off. Then everything becomes muted browns and soft greens and foggy grays.

Fletcher even tries to get the friendly birds to put the leaves back on the tree.

When all the leaves have fallen off, Fletcher feels that he has failed his friend.

The next morning he discovers his tree covered with silver icicles.  Winter has arrived and it’s breathtaking. “’You are more beautiful than ever,’ whispered Fletcher. ‘But are you all right?’
‘A tiny breeze shivered the branches, making a sound like laughter, and in the light of the rising sun, the sparkling branches nodded.’

Fletcher’s naive experience of the turning of the seasons is moving. He makes discoveries in nature with a childlike wonder that is ever so appealing. Paired with Beeke’s evocative illustrations, Rawlinson’s book is pure delight. I see that Rawlinson has written two other Fletcher stories as well: Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas and Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms. Both are also illustrated by Beeke.

My Winter Book Recommendations

The second light of Advent is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

Yes, this is how we began the second week of Advent last Sunday. We drove up to Apple Hill to a Christmas tree farm and roamed about for a while. It had been several years of not enough time or good weather to do this family tradition, so we felt it was time.

The boys enjoyed combing the hillside, and of course, had to go to the very tippy top of the mountain. Asher felt like he was in the woods. That is really an unbeatable feeling when you’re a kid, to feel way out away from civilization and wander among the trees. Most of these trees were pretty young, but it worked fine for little Asher.

When we finally found the perfect tree, Lucas did the cutting.

I snapped this photo because I just couldn’t get over how blue this silver fir tree was.

I conned them into posing for pictures, but only got the super silly kind. That’s OK, though. I think I love those the best. I love to see them having fun.

We stopped at Boa Vista Orchards for a lunch of burgers and some produce shopping. We bought the juiciest Asian pears ever. We picked up an apple blueberry pie to take home, too. Daddy felt that a pie baking in the oven would be the perfect compliment to tree decorating. I think he was right.

We played Christmas lounge music and covered the little tree with shiny ornaments, red ornaments, and stars. There are lots of ornaments left over this year because this Christmas tree is smaller than usual. I’m thinking up other ways to use them. (I admit I really adore ornaments.)

We think it’s lovely.

These photos are glorious shots taken my my dear friend Tate at Ian’s 40th birthday hike—at the beginning of last month. I’m grateful to Tate for taking them and letting me share them here.

Acorn led us on a local hike to Lake Natomas, created by the Nimbus Dam along the American River. He haunts this area a lot and knows where to find the Indian grinding rocks and sunbathing turtles.

It was a warm October day and both the kids and Suki the dog enjoyed brief splashes in the water.

Several friends were able to join us and it was a fun way to spend the day. It felt great to get outside and picnic together.

Sun hats for everyone!

Any day the kids get to wear their camelbaks is a good one in their view.

If I forgot to say it before, many thanks to those that came to celebrate Ian’s birthday with us. We had an epic weekend of fun and friends.