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| Not for children! |
The days are dark; night creeps in early; there is frost in the
air.
I'm not a fan of winter. (I always get that frisson of dread
whenever the Starks declare “Winter is Coming” in George RR Martin's Game of Thrones. And I don't live anywhere near any Wildings.) Partly that's
because British winters are grey and damp, rather than snowy and
crisp. But while the reality of crawling out of bed on a dreary,
dismal morning doesn't grab me, winter in children's fiction is a different
thing.
Snow. Woods.
Wolves. A crackling fire. Stark leafless trees. Shadows
everywhere. This I enjoy.
Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood, in a log cabin in the deep forest of Wisconsin, always gave me the same winter glow. There really is no better
winter read than The Little House in the Big Woods. (Ma, bundled up
against the cold, whacking a bear that she thinks is a cow. Pa
playing the violin during the long nights. Christmas, when Laura
receives her beloved rag doll, Charlotte.)
Unless, that is,
you prefer The Long Winter, where the township is trapped by blizzards, the train lines closed, the Ingalls family are using a
coffee mill to grind out their last handfuls of wheat and slowly
everyone begins to starve...
That sense of threat
is also there in The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Ostensibly it's
the fantasy “Dark” that is the danger, but much of the menace
comes from the weather itself: the snow that falls and falls, the
numbing cold, the village community that is slowly being cut off so
that finally everyone has to take refuge in the old manor house.
I've always felt
that Susan Cooper must have read another winter classic,
The Box of
Delights, as a child – for there are all kinds of echoes, most of
all in the particular blend of English landscape and history, magical
threat and snowy weather. Who can help a shudder of anticipation on
reading that cryptic warning “The wolves are running...”
Yet winter doesn't
have to be about deep woods and rural landscapes. As a very small
child, I was transfixed by Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, which uses
an urban setting to explore the feelings of fascination
and wonder of a small child confronting something as amazing as SNOW.
It's something about the simplicity and immediacy of this book that makes it so
effective.
It brings home the
fact that children's books still, often, ignore the urban landscape.
The Snowy Day was, apparently, inspired by Keat's childhood
neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. (It also has the distinction of
being one of the first American children's books to feature a black
lead character. That was in 1964. Decades later, diversity, or lack
of it, is still a hot issue.)
In general though,
winter seems to be about magic, rather than real life, for children's
authors. Maybe it's because it reasserts the power of nature – of
snow, storms, the biting cold – in a way that makes us feel less
sure of our human technology, more aware of the power of our natural
surroundings. In the depths of winter, it is easier to believe in
supernatural forces. Perhaps we feel less in control, more in touch
with the past, more in need of help?
The excitement, magic and danger of winter is perhaps nowhere better expressed than
in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When spring comes, it marks
the beginning of hope and the end of the dark magic. And yet CS
Lewis draws every drop of excitement from his winter setting: the fun
of sledges, the terror of wolves, the wonderful warmth of hot
chocolate or of snuggling in a fur coat. (Even if you don't approve
of fur coats, you can still enter into the Pevensies' enjoyment of
them.)
Fairytales
This link between
winter and magic seems so strong that it even percolates into adult
literature. Most mainstream adult fiction keeps its distance
from the magical, but the bestselling The Snow Child combines the setting of
Alaska and a pioneering couple determined to make a life there
(almost Laura Ingalls Wilder in its way) with a traditional fairytale
fable, when they meet a child who seems strangely at home in the icy landscape, and surely possessed of magical powers.
A Russian folk tale is the inspiration for the story, and is just one of those included in the classic collection Old Peter's Book of Tales by Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome.
The Snow Queen, the
most wintery of fairytales, is still going strong of course.
And in
case anybody doubted the combined power of fairytales, princesses and
snow,
Frozen is a recent reminder of their continuing appeal to the
child's imagination. (Visiting schools for World Book Day, I've met dozens of little “Elsas” and “Anas”.)
My Winter Tale
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| illustration by Emma Chichester Clark |
Wolves, forests and fairytales were all at the back of my mind when I wrote my book Wolfie. Even though it is a contemporary story (with a helping of fantasy), about a girl called Lucie, and her adventures at home and school, as winter closes in the atmosphere becomes mysterious and magical.
The feeling I aimed to create is brilliantly evoked in this illustration by Emma Chichester Clark.
Its fascinating to
see that even in these days of central heating and cars chauffeured
by mum and dad, where bad weather might seem just a passing annoyance
to children glued to screens, winter has maintained its magic charm.
The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell and
Frost Hollow Hall by Emma Carroll are two recent books which use winter – and its motifs of
snow, woods, magic and wolves - to work their magic.
I'm planning to
curl up with one or other of them when the long, dark nights draw in.
What is your
favourite winter read?
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Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever. (Cover - Jamie Littler)
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman
Wolfie is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
(Cover: Emma Chichester Clark)
"Funny, clever and satisfying..." Books for Keeps
