Dear Rebecca, Winter Is Here - Softcover

Jean Craighead George wrote over one hundred books for children and young adults. Her novel Julie of the Wolves won the Newbery Medal in 1973, and she received a 1960 Newbery Honor for My Side of the Mountain. She continued to write acclaimed picture books that celebrate the natural world. Her other books with Wendell Minor include The Wolves Are Back; Luck; Everglades; Arctic Son; Morning, Noon, and Night; and Galapagos George.

Loretta Krupinski is the illustrator of many books for children, including Dear Rebecca, Winter is Here by Jean Craighead George, The Old Ladies Who Liked Cats by Carol Greene, How a Seed Grows, by Helene J. Jordan, and her own Bluewater Journal: The Voyage of the Sea Tiger. Ms. Krupinski lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

PreSchool-Grade 2-"Winter is here. It was brought by little hands of darkness. Each little hand is a few minutes long." Thus a woman begins to explain the solstice to her young granddaughter. In spare prose, George details all the wonders that the season brings. The simplicity of her writing belies the wealth of information that the narrative contains. However, her metaphor of "little hands" that bring on winter may need some adult interpretation. Krupinski's stunning, opaque gouache, watercolor, and colored-pencil art covers three-quarters of each double-page spread. Wispy, soft textures and deep colors aptly capture the stillness of the snow and the cold air. Whether marching with Canada geese, sitting on a barren tree branch next to a squirrel's nest, howling with wolves on the hillside, diving down a snowbank with an otter, or making snow angels, the art places readers inside each scene. An author's note about the solstice precedes the text. Other choices might be Nancy White Carlstrom's Goodbye Geese (Philomel, 1991) or Ann Schweninger's Wintertime (Viking, 1990), but this effort from a versatile author and a talented illustrator is a whole-language beauty.
Dot Minzer, North Barrington School, Barrington, IL
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.