Mrs Winter’s Hearth Fire

In ‘Mrs Winter’s Hearth Fire’, a collection of 37 short stories about winter, Carl Norac and Gerda Dendooven give both a voice and a face to the year’s coldest season. They make winter sound and look radiant like never before. We meet a woman who can cause snow to fall by waltzing, we hear about the failed marriage of Mrs Winter and Mr Spring, as a result of which the two seasons now follow each other, and about winter inventing the common cold in a fit of boredom. We read about a letter writer who finds all sorts of reasons to blame the cold for his letter being late, about mummy’s winter cheeks that are as ruddy as strawberry ice-cream, and about the cracking of ice on a pond, which is really the sound of winter having the giggles. ‘Mrs Winter’s Hearth Fire’ celebrates winter in all its facets.

Using humorous, sparkling and poetic language, Carl Norac has fun with different narrative genres in this collection. Gerda Dendooven gives each story her own, distinctive interpretation through her full-page illustrations in red and blue.