Micro review: Welcome Back Sun by Michael Emberley

Notes From the Reading Nook: January 30

Good morning, lovely people.

For a few weeks it was a frozen tundra here, and now the temperatures have shot up 40 degrees, and it’s wet, foggy soup. I’ve been keeping my spirits up — essential work, if you want to make it through winter in Wisconsin with your mental health at least sort of intact — by exercising hard (even more dancing than usual); listening to “teenage girl music” (my husband’s words, and he’s not wrong); wearing some weird outfits (the other day my male coworker asked me why I was dressed like a bird 😂); neglecting tasks on my to-do list in favor of lazing in bed drinking tea and reading poetry, ice fishing, and dancing (did I mention dancing?); and generally doing whatever the hell I want.

Windchill of 3 degrees, 10 inches of ice: a great day to be alive

The fact that this period coincides with a lot of heavy lifting at my day job, in the midst of great change and uncertainty at the same, is not a coincidence. I need to bring the best of myself to work, and I am. I need to take care of myself, and I am.

On the few days when the murk has gotten to me, literally and metaphorically, I’ve been able to remember that the atmospheric conditions that matter the most are the ones inside me, and — regardless of whether or not I always believe it, especially in the moment, and even though I often don’t want to do what I know I need to do — it’s entirely under my control. I get to decide how I feel; I get to choose what I focus on. It doesn’t depend on anything outside of me; I don’t require validation from anyone. No conversation, recognition, or text message will uncloud the sunshine for me by making me feel seen and cherished, or affirm my worth. (That would be nice, don’t get me wrong, but unfortunately, that’s not the way it actually works.)

It can be as beautiful — or not — as I wish, on the inside, and that’s entirely up to me.

As Louise Hay says: the point of power is in the present moment. Which means there is only now. Isn’t that liberating? Can’t you feel the freedom in that?

You can do something different, choose another thought, even change, right this second. Whatever the weather around you.

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• D’Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D’Aulaire and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

• Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake (this is our current read-aloud at bedtime)

• Boom! Bellow! Bleat! Animals Poems for Two or More Voices by Georgia Heard (this is our current poetry at bedtime — my 9yo has called it “hilarious” more than once)

• Grandmother Winter by Phyllis Root

• Speediest! 19 Very Fast Animals by Steve Jenkins (we continue to slowly work our way through this outstanding series at breakfast)

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Micro review: Welcome Back Sun by Michael Emberley (1993)

I have wanted to review Welcome Back Sun for years because it’s a truly lovely book that can help this time of year, but it’s precisely because of this that I’ve never known where to put it: it doesn’t fit in with “children’s books about winter,” or not exactly, because it’s about the end of winter, or that point where the end is in sight, but it also doesn’t fit in with “children’s books about spring,” or not exactly, because it’s also about how spring hasn’t arrived quite yet.

Thankfully I finally figured out how — and when — to share it with you, because it’s the perfect read for this in-between time.

In a small village in Norway, the sun disappears from September to march, a season when “nature has fallen asleep,” a time called murketiden. It’s during “the murky time” when one little girl and her mother are really hungry for sunshine, struggling through the dark days, with only the hope provided by a folktale, which tells of another little girl, who climbed Mount Gausta to show the sun the way home.

Every year, the old story inspires the people of the village to make just this trek — everyone wakes up early, packs food, straps on their skis, and hikes and hikes and hikes until finally they reach the mountain peak, just in time to see the sky “explode with brilliant light,” joyfully welcoming back the sun.

There’s nothing particularly exciting about this quiet tale — complemented by Emberly’s soft colored pencil and watercolor illustrations — but it’s a lovely peek at a very specific Norwegian custom, and one that reminds those of us who must journey through very long, dark winters that even when it seems like it will never end, the world is always changing, and spring always returns.

I like this one when you’re losing your mind a little bit at the end of the season — especially if your children have had to have indoor recess due to excessive cold for weeks upon weeks and are bouncing off the walls, the furniture, and your brain nonstop, not that I have personal experience with that exact situation this year — and, for those of you who don’t experience winters as intense, sharing with young children a different type of winter than you may be used to.

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I need your help! I’m running out of 📫 Questions From You, where I spend a post answering questions subscribers have sent me. If there’s something you’re wondering or anything you’d like to ask me about children’s books, raising readers, or my own family’s culture of reading, please do.

You’ll hear from me again in March! In the meantime, read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah

P.S. All Bookshop.org links are affiliate ones — I receive a small commission if you make a purchase. This is also a reminder that I have a ton of booklists there to help you find titles for kiddos from birth to age 10, on all sorts of topics — including a list to help you raise readers.