National Trust: When Winter Comes

I've been lucky enough to have reviewed two other seasons from this collection of books and I have loved each one! They're incredibly charming for anyone who loves and values the outdoors, and wishes to pass on this love to the younger generation.

In When Winter Comes, each page is filled with simple yet attractive illustrations showing the little girl enjoying lots of wintery activities including sledging, snowman building, feeding the birds, drinking hot chocolate and baking gingerbread. This could help to give inspiration for lots of free/cheap activities to enjoy with your children over the winter period as well as reminding us of some of the really important jobs that are easy to forget such as feeding the birds when they can't access much themselves in the depths of winter.

My little boy is two and he loves looking at the pictures and talking about the activities he recognises. He particularly loved the page with the giant snowman. There's also a double page spread at the back of the book where children can pick out the objects they spotted within the story; this would be a nice activity for slightly older children to be able to develop their comprehension skills by going back through the book to identify each one.

My only criticism is that the story is based around a very extreme version of winter weather with heavy snow and icicles. Although our winters do seem to be getting more extreme, this isn't entirely characteristic of winter weather in most of the UK. As a teacher, we spend a long time trying to undo misconceptions like this whereas this book further compounds those.

Picture book / Reviewed by Lucy Hopkins, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 0+