December 5, 2025 By Maria
Today I would like to share my thoughts from the day after Thanksgiving:
Before Sunday I will need to make a journey into my attic to pull out our Advent calendar and Jesse Tree. My daughter has already reminded me, at least twice. On this Friday after Thanksgiving, we are all taking a slow day. My younger son and I took the puppy on a long chilly walk before lunch. Now my kids are taking advantage of some of their Thanksgiving school vacation time to play video games, and I am sipping tea and reading a couple of my favorite fall picture books.
I am enjoying my last day or so of fall decorations and cozy cloth pumpkins on the table. I am savoring the pages and sips of tea while I hear the wind whistle around the chimney. Even the puppy is taking it easy and enjoying an afternoon nap. The first book I read is Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur with beautiful linoleum cut block print illustrations by Leslie Evans. There is something about those bold print lines and textures that really give this book a strong autumn coziness. The scenes are comfortingly familiar even if I never lived in an old farmhouse or had fields of corn growing outside my window. I love how the poems and illustrations show the slow approach of and preparation for winter. One overhead view of a nighttime town square reminds me of Grant Wood’s painting, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, which had been the subject of one of my college art history papers. I love the beautiful colors of the fall and the cooler but not frigid weather; however, as winter gets closer the early darkness and occasional cold rain give me the urge to hibernate and hide inside until spring. Reading this book reminds me of the cozy times and activities colder weather brings. I know I will slowly start to enjoy winter when it comes, especially if there is snow, it might just take me a little bit to get there.
The second book I picked up for autumn comfort is Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and illustrated by the beloved Barabara Cooney. This book tells the story of a farmer in early nineteenth century New England on an October morning, preparing for and journeying to Portsmouth Market to sell all the goods he and his family have made over the past year. When the farmer returns home with the few frugal purchases he made after the sales, he and his family start again to prepare for the following year’s trip to the market. There is something very comforting in this seasonal repetitiveness and the hands-on labor depicted in this book. There is definitely an allure that modern readers feel for this simpler time. I am also susceptible to that allure and I like to cultivate that type of coziness in my own home with crafting and baking. All the same, I can still acknowledge that though simple and somewhat relaxed, it was still a hard and laborious life to live for that farmer and his family.
Just because our lives seem to move faster now and stress seems to constantly surround us, I don’t want to go back to candlelight and dawn to dust labor. We adapt to the times we live in, but I feel it is still important to take breaks from the busy and be present in the moment as I have attempted to do this autumn. Life was different back then, but not easier. Each generation has their own version of hard. We can do hard things. We can also take a moment or two now and then for quiet. These books help me remember that.
More Bookshelves Please 