I’m making more of an attempt to appreciate winter this year, as I enter into the ridiculously cold months up in the lake country of Wisconsin. I can’t think of a better way to enter into this season than having read this beautiful book. I was transported to another time, and there truly couldn’t have been a better time for me to read this. I’m truly thankful that I can look out my window to see the ground covered in snow, the trees bare and resting, and families of deer traversing the grounds of this beautiful place I get to live this year. This book was such a lovely and heartwarming collection of stories, that truly help you to appreciate every season, but especially winter as the story begins in winter and ends with the return to winter. It’s a reminder to slow down, to appreciate the ways in which winter is magical and calls us to cozy living, in the midst of its challenges and limitations. We don’t really prepare for winter in the ways that people used to. Summer and fall used to be times of hard work and preparation for a time when you couldn’t work as much and you needed to live off of your harvest during the colder and darker months. Winter was the time when stories were told by the evening fire, when the work day ended early as darkness came sooner. This book reminded me of all of the luxuries I take for granted, and challenges me to strip back and make movement toward simplicity, to appreciate the small pleasures. It helped me recognize the way in which the ease and convenience of which I acquire food and goods has made me appreciate them less. I wasn’t expecting this book to challenge me so much, while also inspiring me with its beauty and simplicity.

And the words that are written… the way that Wilder describes the world around her, both outdoors and in her quiet cabin in the woods… it’s so lovely. I will be reading this over and over again, probably for the rest of my life. A new favorite, for sure.

Also, a quick note because I believe it ought to be said. There is one instance of a racial slur in this book, in a folk song called “Uncle Ned” that Laura’s father sings one night. It uses a term for black people that indicates a prejudice, and there are no other mentions of BIPOC in this work that I recall. I’ve read that there may be more content in other books from this series that is even more racially insensitive, particularly toward indigenous groups, but I can’t speak on that yet as I haven’t read the other books. What I can say is that while I wish there weren’t any words that indicate racial prejudice within this work, it does seem tame compared with many other older works and pieces of “classical” literature. This song could easily be skipped over if reading to children, or used as a talking and teaching point.