An ode to winter
Review of "Counting Winter" by Nancy White Carlstrom.
Counting WinteR
Nancy White Carlstrom
Illustrated by Claudia McGehee
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers,
2024.
Author Nancy White Carlstrom drew inspiration for this charming children’s picture book from living in Alaska with her family for 18 years. In an author’s note, White Carlstrom extends an invitation to children: “Open your wise and wonderful eyes to the natural world around you. Look and see the ways of the wild, their paths and tracks. Listen to the stories and songs of its creatures. Maybe you’ll discover something that inspires your own winter poem!”
Through counting and rhyming verses, White Carlstrom makes winter and its creatures come alive: “One red fox walks / across the white snow / quietly / stalking winter. / Two ravens croak and gurgle / cutting the sounds out of forty below / raucously / talking winter. / Three snowshoe hares / hop on big paws / silently / tracking winter. / Four red squirrels feast / at their midden full of cones / hungrily / cracking winter.”
Other creatures – eagles, voles, musk oxen, sled dogs, owls, woodpeckers, and chickadees – inhabit the winter landscape with energy, beauty, and purpose. Finally, winter is over: “Twelve excited children / slip and slide / on melting ice / happily / meeting spring.”
Illustrator Claudia McGehee’s scratchboard and watercolor pictures capture the majesty of God’s gift of winter. About the process of illustrating this book, McGehee writes, “I found that a winter palette is surprisingly colorful, with its ice blues, spruce greens, furry mammal browns and reds, and of course, snowflake whites. Even though I was illustrating just one season, I used almost all the colors in my paint box.”
Counting Winter concludes with profiles of each animal depicted in the book.
