This winter, in Boston, where I live, we are getting a lot of snow. More than we ever had before! I've been meaning to write about this book before the first snow came, but now I am writing about it from under about six feet of snow, which, is actually, making the experience even better.As some of my wonderful readers might have ascertained from the loving descriptions of this book about Pugman and this book about Learning to Fly I have an extremely high opinion about all of Sebastian Meschenmoser's work and consider him to be arguably one of the very best children's book illustrators alive. So I've been holding off on writing about this book until I needed to do something that made very happy; and re-visiting each page of this story inevitably does.
In Waiting For Winter the story unfolds as a bunch of forest animals anticipate the start of winter. The deer tells the squirrel who tells the hedgehog who tells the bear that snow is wet and cold and soft and the three of them make a considerable effort not to fall asleep for the winter but to figure out which of the cold and soft and wet objects the forest might be snowflakes.
The book is on my all time favorites list for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, it offers the incredible pleasure of engaging with Meschenmoser's illustrations.
I think he really shows off just how extraordinarily good he is at drawing much more so in this book than in any of the others. This showing off is lyrical and humorous and flirtatious and while I am obviously imposing my own feelings into this, I really feel like the conversation that my brain has with his drawings happens on this very special level, where I just have to shake my head and smile and accept the fact that somebody writing children's books is really that good.
The masterful line he uses is as effective in the backgrounds as it is in his characters. The lines and textures of the different animals perfectly describe their personalities - from the frantic squirrel, to the passive hedgehog, to the authoritative bear.
- and then there are the pages where the majority of space is just plain white, with a few exquisite doodles that convey as much information as the pages with the more resolved drawings:
As actual snow starts falling Meschenmoser seamlessly transitions into painting, starting with one glorious snow flake that lands on bears' nose, and eventually covering the whole forest with snow.
The second thing, I love about this book, is, of course, the absence of a moral and a lesson for the characters to learn. This book is just about life, anticipation, being silly, having a hard time waiting for something important, celebrating the wrong thing, being amazed at the simple and the beautiful, singing sea shanties with friends, building snowmen, and falling asleep with your mates in a large and comfortable den after witnessing the passage of one season into another. This book is about the magic of existence, in which each detail is conveyed with pure love.
The last thing I think is really cool about all of Meschenmoser's books is the way there's an almost cinematic introduction into the stories. on the Front cover end page we see birds flying over a cliff, bringing us into the space of the story. On the title page, the cliff is at the left edge, and dry leaves are following the flight of the birds. With these two simple images we are told all about place, time, setting and mood, and once the words kick in on the first page we are comfortably engaged with the story.
On the back page end paper there is a drawing of (I would guess) the author himself walking through the forest collecting firewood and seeing some of the evidence of the story that took place in the book.
I think this book is worth getting whether you have kids to read it to or not, just for the beautiful drawings and the magical place it takes you to. I think for an artist it is very hard to create an image of a forest that feels exactly like the idea of a forest felt when you were a child. Meschenmoser is one the two artists I know and love who can do it very well.
