Boots, hats and parkas. Sleds and snowshoes and snow angels. Condensation of the breath. The markers of the wintry cold fill the pages of John Owens's senses-stirring One Winter Up North, and yet this wordless picture book leaves readers with the impression of engulfing warmth, due to the loving family at its center.
One Winter Up North takes readers on a snowy winter camping trip enjoyed by a mom, dad and school-age child. (Readers of Owens's picture book debut, One Summer Up North, will recognize the featured interracial family.) Without the help of text to drive his narrative, Owens achieves a sort of visual poetry on every page. Snow-topped pine trees call to mind melting ice cream cones. Blue arcs in the snow resemble ocean waves in miniature. Tracks in the snow conjure necklaces, individual footprints the links in a chain. But for some readers, the book's most memorable illustration will be the one showing the interior of the tent where the family enjoys a hot meal following their outside exertions, a soothing yellow glow suffusing the scene.
Readers don't need to know that, according to an author's note, this camping trip takes place in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota; they just need to know that, come wintertime, an animal-visited odyssey may await them outdoors, and that, for those with no opportunity for a real-life snowy adventure, One Winter Up North is a sublime surrogate. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author