“If Nancy and I had been in the second grade together, we would have been the kids in the back that were drawing and writing,” artist Claudia McGehee said, reflecting on her first ever collaboration with the beloved children’s book author Nancy White Carlstrom.
It’s a sentiment shared by Carlstrom, who has written dozens of books aimed at beginning and early readers. Offering appreciation for the illustrations McGehee added to “Counting Winter,” her latest title, she said, “I’m so thankful and happy with what she’s done.”
Carlstrom and McGehee, who had previously not known each other but whose mutual respect is quite evident, were brought together by Eerdmans Publishing on the newly released “Counting Winter,” an Alaska-based book that provides its youngest readers with an introduction to numbers, while offering enough depth to hold their attention as they grow older. “The book is being marketed towards children four to eight,” Carlstrom said.
On one level, “Counting Winter” is a numbers book for toddlers in which wintertime scenes of Alaska animals are paired with the number of them seen in the artwork. The number three is illustrated with a trio of snowshoe hares bounding toward the center of the page. For five, a quintet of golden eagles soar through the sky. And the with number 12, the largest number found in the book, a dozen happy children play atop the slowly melting snow and ice that heralds the arrival of spring.
For somewhat older children, able to read some words for themselves, Carlstrom’s gentle wordplay, offered in poetic meter, will help them expand their vocabulary. “Two ravens croak and gurgle / cutting the sounds out of forty below / raucously / talking winter,” reads the text for the number two. Two pages later, “Four red squirrels feast / at their midden full of cones / hungrily / cracking winter.”
McGehee’s mirthful artwork, meanwhile, will appeal to children and adults alike. On one page, six voles tunnel their way beneath the snow-covered surface of the ground, while a lynx keeps careful watch above. On another, eight energetic huskies dash down a trail pulling a musher on a sled, tongues flopping from their mouths, and dog smiles brightening their faces.
On the final page, brief introductions to each of the animals seen in the book prompt readers to learn more about them. “Open your wise and wonderful eyes to the natural world around you,” Carlstrom writes in her author’s note that follows. “Look and see the ways of the wild, their paths and tracks. Listen to the stories and songs of its creatures. Maybe you’ll discover something that inspires your own winter poem!”
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Carlstrom knows Alaska’s winter well. Her early life took her across America and around the globe. She grew up in Pennsylvania, and then, by her own words, “chased my boyfriend up to Massachusetts.” The couple were soon married, and after teaching for a spell in Gloucester, left for Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and an extended stay in Central America. From there they moved to Seattle, where she “opened a children’s bookshop called the Secret Garden and really enjoyed introducing families to good children’s books.”
Carlstrom soon began penning her own books, and as her first was reaching shelves in 1987, her husband took a job with the Fairbanks International Airport. In January of that year, with two very young children in tow, they were greeted by subzero temperatures and the long darkness of Interior winters. They planned on a two-year stay, but remained for 18.
During those years, Carlstrom built a wildly successful career as a children’s book author, with her Jesse Bear series — named for one of her sons — becoming her best known. Living in the hills outside of Fairbanks, she was surrounded by wilds and wildlife, both of which became key influences on her writing.
McGehee has never lived in Alaska, but she’s spent ample time here. Originally from the Northwest, she moved to the Midwest when her husband took a position with the University of Iowa. “I’ve just been as a tourist several times to Alaska,” she said of her time in the northlands, “and all four visits have been connected with the book ‘My Wilderness: An Alaskan Adventure,’ that I wrote about the painter Rockwell Kent, who had his heyday in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”
Having established herself as an illustrator of children’s books with an emphasis on nature, the words and images evoked by “Counting Winter” immediately captured her artistic muse. “I saw the playfulness, but I also saw more of the natural world in my own mind.”
McGehee offered suggestions for changes to the book that Carlstrom felt would enhance what she had already envisioned. “I think it really changed quite a bit with Claudia’s illustrations and I’m so thankful and happy with what she’s done,” she said. “The whole direction of the book I think is a little older than I originally saw it, but I’m very pleased with it.”
Carlstrom had mostly retired in 2009 and didn’t plan to publish any more books at the time. But, she said, “Counting Winter” had been on her back burner for years, and she recently decided to bring it out it in part as a gift for her grandchildren. “That’s very special,” she emphasized, “to be able to give them the book.”
Even if they spent their childhoods a continent apart, Carlstrom and McGehee both grew up developing the skills that would define their adult lives. “I can remember in second grade writing poems and stories, and all through high school and college was a writer,” Carlstrom recalled.
McGehee was well along that same path at the same age. “I was definitely doing a lot of drawing, and my dear mother, who’s 95, saved some of my picture books that I did in second grade.” she said. “I’ve always had this within me to illustrate predominantly, but also to write and to tell stories ever since I was a kid.”
Both women feel honored to be able to create books for emerging readers. “I love to illustrate books that I would have liked to have looked at as a kid, as far as details, layers in a book,” McGehee said. “Not only beautiful pictures, but multiple symbolism in the words and the writing. If your readers are reading the words and looking at the illustrations, there’s a dovetailing that goes on.”
At this, Carlstrom chimed in with an anecdote that, she explained, perfectly encapsulates the joys of her long and successful career: “Being a writer of children’s books is just a wonderful job,” she said, adding that she recently received a note from a lifelong fan of her work who told her, “I grew up the youngest of eight and got very little support with reading. But ‘Jesse Bear’ started a love for books that has lasted a lifetime. And I look forward to passing that joy on to my son. Thank you for sharing your talents and stories with the world.”
This, Carlstrom concluded, is “so exciting. After 40 years, to have somebody wanting to pass those same books on to his son and saying it made such a difference in his life. That’s the big reward”
