Winter Waits

I fell in love with Wild Child when reading this to my children... so as soon as I saw Winter Waits, we immediately snapped it up, and was not dissapointed. Lynn Plourde's wonderful wordplay tickles the ears when read aloud, and Greg Couch's beautiful illustrations have many subtle layers to explore and talk over with children. This book is geared mostly towards the beginning reader set: However, being a prospective teacher, I can fully see myself reading Winter Waits and the companion books to a third grade level, for fun a well as to teach them about freestyle poetry, and how words can be used for description (perhaps sparking a budding writer?). I cannot recommend this book enough!

I first discovered Lynn Plourde and Greg Couch's book Wild Child serveral years ago and loved reading it to my multi-age primary classroom students. The children also created delightful portraits of "Wild Child". I loved the way Wild Child suggested that a sibling would be coming along and, sure enough, here comes Winter! Winter Waits is equally beautiful and depicts a tender father/child relationship not unlike the Mother/child relationship in Wild Child. My students remember these books and look forward to reading them every year. We can't wait for Spring's arrival!

"Winter Waits" is an enjoyable children's story. Lynn Plourde's easy-to-read rhyming text is nicely complemented by Greg Couch's excellent illustrations.In this story, Winter is the playful child of Mother Earth and Father Time. The plot is simple: Winter waits for his father to finish work so that they can spend some time together. Winter amuses himself in the meantime by turning the world into a wintry playground. Sample text: "So Winter waits / for an hour or two, / painting the grass / with a frosty hue."Couch's colorful illustrations have a playfully surreal quality to them. Overall, this is a fun book that celebrates both family ties and the virtue of patience.

The illustrations alone made this a necessary addition to my library--they glow with a Chagall-like luminescence. The story itself is clever and loving.

As the author of this book, I was excited to continue the story of Nature's family. In the first book, WILD CHILD, Mother Earth tried to get her reluctant daughter, Autumn, to sleep. She finally succeeded, only to have Winter wake up and bounce on the bed. In WINTER WAITS, Mother Earth sends her son Winter off to see his dad, Father Time. Winter begs his dad to play with him, but Father Time is too busy working (setting the clocks to start the New Year), and so Winter must wait. While Winter waits, he paints the world in frost, carves an ice sculpture, and "snizzes and snips" snowflakes. When Winter brings his dad the most beautiful snowflake that he cut out, Father Time finally stops working so they can play. Father and son jump up to the sky and have a pillow fight with the clouds, creating a blizzard: "They wristle and wrestle, frisk and frolic, scuffle and scamper away. They snigger and snicker, rizzle and romp, chuckle and chortle till day." Father Time and Winter cuddle in a snowdrift and fall asleep. Then Mother Earth reappears--after all, Spring mustn't over sleep.I enjoyed imagining this next part of Nature's family adventures, but the illustrator, Greg Couch, has done an amazing job of personifying the characters of Winter and Father Time. Winter is a playful imp with snowflake eyes and icicle hair. Father Time is a composite of visual time references--sun dial, shadows, moon phases, constellations (A fun and challenging activity for kids would be for them to find all the visual time references in Father Time--and then learn how they each help us to tell time).I hope that readers enjoy this continuing journey through the seasons and that they may always have the gift of time!