WINTER CUB

A little wolf proves his mettle one Christmas.

This Yuletide tale opens with stardust and the birth of a litter of wolves, one of whom is named Winter Cub. Although well loved, Winter Cub is deemed too small to hunt with the pack. Watching his siblings leave again and again, Winter Cub feels sad and left out. The story unfolds like a hero’s journey, with Winter Cub sneaking away, determined to prove himself. Alas, he loses his way in the woods, as any good hero must. Alone in the forest, spectacularly illustrated by Martens with snow-laden trees casting shadows on the icy ground, he comes upon a herd of reindeer. When he inadvertently frightens them, one of the reindeer injures his leg, but a familiar holiday gift-giving figure emerges to give Winter Cub a job on his flying sleigh. A little red-breasted bird accompanies Winter Cub, and the illustrations (seen from a bird’s-eye view) are where Martens does her most magical work—the loping shadows of Winter Cub’s family searching for him in the snowy forest glimpsed from above echo an earlier scene of Winter Cub alone and lost. In this gentle tale, originally published in the Netherlands and Belgium and translated from Dutch, wolves and reindeer appreciate one another rather than becoming predator and prey. Kindness matters, and Winter Cub’s got it in spades.

A sweet Yuletide story with a message sure to resonate all year long.