Chil­dren’s

The Wind That Want­ed to Rest

Shel­don Ober­man; Neil Wald­man, illus.
  • Review
By – February 26, 2013

The old win­ter wind, exhaust­ed from trav­el­ing back and forth across the world, now wants only a place to rest. But no mat­ter where he stops, whether among a stand of trees in a mead­ow or on top of a moun­tain, he’s not wel­come. When he enters the open door of an inn, the trav­el­ers com­plain about the cold, and the innkeep­er chas­es him out through an open win­dow. Furi­ous at his mis­treat­ment, the wind buries the hous­es in snow. He does not stop rag­ing until a lit­tle girl invites him to stay for as long as he wants in the dark, qui­et place under her house. The wa­tercolor illus­tra­tions, all in shades of blue and pur­ple, give way on the last page to a ten­der green — in hon­or of spring — when the wind awakes and takes his leave. An after­word by the writer and renowned sto­ry­teller, Penin­nah Schram, tells us that even though she could find no men­tion of this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry in the Israel Folk­tale Archives, the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the wind often appears in Jew­ish folk­tales. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 5 – 7.

Susan Kan­tor was a senior writer/​editor for Girl Scouts of the USA, a chil­dren’s book edi­tor, and a past judge for the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the illus­trat­ed children’s book cat­e­go­ry. She is a writer and a docent at the Rubin Muse­um in New York City, where she leads pub­lic and pri­vate tours.

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