Children’s books for the winter solstice

Notes From the Reading Nook: November 28

Well, my 2023 continues: last Tuesday morning, right after I dropped my sweet kiddos at school and had arrived home, ready for eight straight hours alone to prepare for a 500-mile car trip with an impatient driver and two young children (wherein I was also planning on taking good care of myself and like, enjoying my day), I got one of those calls you really never, ever want to receive: it was someone from the sheriff’s office (my mind blanked out when she introduced herself and I still don’t know), informing me that my mom had been in a serious car accident and was, after the 20 minutes it took the EMTs to extract her from her vehicle, in an ambulance en route to the nearest hospital.

Fast forward to the good news, seven days later: she’s alive and doing remarkably well for someone involved in a head-on collision at 55mph. We live 20 minutes away from the best trauma center in Wisconsin and have access to exceptional healthcare. Miraculously, she suffered no lasting damage to her internal organs, her brain, head, neck, or spine.

The bad news: It’s still pretty bad. I won’t recount it — the list is too long, in any case — just say that I wouldn’t wish anything like this on my worst enemy, and I don’t recommend this adjacent experience for anyone with loved ones of any kind. I am my mom’s only child and her power of attorney, so it’s just me alone overseeing her medical needs, and I don’t recommend that either. (If I didn’t feel that getting my tubes tied was one of the best decisions of my life — like, I’m still happy about it every single day — I’d be going hard on trying to have more babies right now, just to spread the weight around, so my children don’t ever have to carry anything like this on their own.) I don’t have thoughtful, much less eloquent words for what this is like or how it feels.

So, though I’ve already finished nearly everything for this newsletter through the end of the year — thank you, Past Sarah, for working so damn hard — whatever’s left is getting left, for the first time ever.

I have written my way through many challenges over the past few years — I started this thing only two months into the pandemic lockdown, working from home full-time with a 5 and 3yo and a husband who, as an essential worker, left the house all day every day — and I’ve written and written and written my way through everything since: the traumatic loss of a baby at daycare, the hospitalization of my sister after her partner tried to choke her to death, a year of homeschooling, my youngest’s Lyme disease, and these are just the things that come immediately to mind. This year alone, I’ve written through the five final difficult months of my grandmother’s life and then her passing, through my own emergency surgery, through my mom’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, not all of which I’ve even admitted here. It has never been a burden to do this. Sometimes it has been hard, sure, and sometimes I’ve kept going when I didn’t necessarily feel like I could, but it has helped me feel steady, continuing to produce and publish this newsletter twice a week, every week, week after week after week. It has comforted me, to write come what may — and I honestly don’t know how to do it differently.

But whatever this situation is, and it is many things — I am holding multiple truths at once, in nearly every way — one of them is a wall I’m hitting. Right now, I cannot write my way through.

For the time being: I’ll be republishing a lot. I may not be able to write a special edition on Valentine’s Day. I will be taking all of February off.

I will have limited ability to respond to comments and emails, and I will be hitting pause on providing personalized booklists to paid subscribers.

Thank you for your understanding and patience as I navigate and cope. Thank you for your ongoing support as a subscriber of this newsletter (and of course, for some of you, as IRL or online friends). I’m grateful for so many things it’s overwhelming — there is so much to be grateful for, in my life, no matter what I’m going through, no matter how intractable: this newsletter is one of them, and so are you.

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• Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear by N.M. Bodecker

• We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Tracy Sorrell

• One Potato, Two Potato by Cynthia DeFelice

• All the Small Poems and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth (my 9yo has been reading this out loud to us and if you think this doesn’t make me feel like I’ve unlocked a level of life I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to — my child who took a very, very, VERY long time to learn to read reading excellent poetry out loud — let’s just say it leaves me speechless with tears and gratitude)

A text exchange with my husband after I spotted her reading All the Small Poems…

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Mini issue: Winter solstice

Without ever planning or even really discussing it, solstice has become our holiest family tradition. Though we do nothing to mark it in summer — I am usually inside hiding on the longest day of the year, as I am not a person who relishes seeing the sun at 9pm no matter how brutal the winters are here in Wisconsin — we celebrate each winter solstice by eating dinner in total darkness, all the lights off in the house, with only candles at the table.

A few days ahead of the delightful uproar and excitement of Christmas — my second-favorite holiday, trailing only Halloween, and an event I go absolutely all out for every year, with the intent of making my house look, essentially, like Gimbels after Buddy the Elf starts going to work with his dad —

it’s deeply lovely, and nourishing in more ways than one, to have this slim space of calm and quiet. My children derive great pleasure from ensuring every light is off — every overhead, every lamp, every string of Christmas lights (so many I regularly blow fuses), every candle. It’s amazing how much light we really live with by the time December 21st or 22nd comes around.

And it’s amazing how powerful it is to turn it all off. (Surely there is a metaphor here.)

I have no photos of this event, ever — the idea of bringing out my phone is totally anathema to the entire thing, not least because of the light a device emits but also because it would take away from my being fully present in the moment, and if ever there was a time I want to be fully present in the moment with all of my being, this is it.

We don’t really prepare for this by reading — we’ve been doing it long enough, we don’t need to —but we do enjoy some books about solstice:

• Mother Winter by James Christopher Carroll

• Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven (I wrote a bit about making sun bread in my 2021 holiday activity survival guide)

• The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards

• The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice by Wendy Pfeffer (nonfiction)

The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards

May the darkest night of the year also be the beginning of the return of the light for you, literally and figuratively, in all the ways you want and need.

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ICYMI

If you’re in full-on shopping mode and are looking for gifts for the young readers in your life, the week before last I released my own book gift guide:

And 15% off

If nothing on my list appeals, you can also check out the picks from the folks at Bookshop.org.

Not only do they highlight some top-notch titles, they’re offering 15% off your order — which means you not only get to cross some presents off your list, you support independent bookstores and this newsletter all at the same time. WIN!

Use the code HOLIDAY23 at checkout — valid through December 18th.

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Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah

P.S. All Bookshop.org links are affiliate ones, which means I get a tiny commission if you use any of the links here to make a purchase. It’s a super easy way, with zero additional cost to you, to support this newsletter.