Winter Is Coming

Winter Is Coming by Tony Johnston, Illustrated by Jim LaMarche, 2014.

This is a peaceful story about the changing of seasons. The story starts in September, when a girl who lives in the countryside begins to notice the changing of the seasons. It is the beginning of fall, but fall leads to winter

All through the autumn, the girl watches animals from her platform tree house. She notices changes in their behavior because of the changing seasons, and she makes notes and sketches about what she sees.

Animals are searching for food, fattening themselves up or storing away food for winter.

The animals she sees include a fox, bears, skunks, deer, woodpeckers, rabbits, a lynx, chipmunks, and geese.

As the book continues, winter comes. The animals stop coming to the girl’s observation point because they’ve either moved on or have started hibernating or have sought shelter for the winter. It starts snowing, and the girl goes home.

My Reaction

I thought this was a calm and educational story about the behavior of animals and changing seasons. The pictures in the book are beautiful, taking up full pages. The warm oranges and yellows of fall at the beginning of the book gradually shift more to blues and purples for winter as it gets darker and colder.

I also loved the way the girl sketched all of the animals she saw and made notes about their behavior. In the pictures, you can see parts of her sketches on her sketch pad as she draws. I also noticed that, in the very front of the book, there is a picture of the girl’s blank notebook and sketchpad, and the very last illustration in the book shows the pages of her notebooks filled with sketches of animals. I think the story does a good job of encouraging young readers to notice details in the world around them.

Although I’ve been calling the child a girl all the way through my review, and I think she’s a girl because of what she’s wearing, I did stop to think that the pictures do leave that a little ambiguous. The child’s clothing is a clue, but the child’s hairstyle could really be worn by anyone, which is might be intentional, so any young reader could identify with the main character.