The North Wind and the Sun

Stead (The Sun Is Late and So Is the Farmer) retells the Aesop’s fable of the title, introducing three sisters, portrayed with silver hair and brown skin, and each dressed in a red, yellow, or blue woolen coat. “Many times patched and many times mended over many long winters,” the ragged garments delight the Sun and infuriate the North Wind, who resolves to blow them off. A fairy tale lilt distinguishes the narrative voice (“Castle walls were toppled,/ and mighty ships were sent to the bottom of the sea”), while the sisters’ agency and voices counterbalance the tension between the Sun and the North Wind. Understanding the source of the North Wind’s violence, the sisters express “pity... for his loneliness... and for his wasted breath.” Softly hued art—rendered in colored pencil and printmaking techniques—underscore the North Wind’s rage by distorting his features, and trace the Sun’s infinite goodness in her beaming face. To the original fable’s lesson about kindness producing better results than force, Stead adds a sense of healing, as the sisters promise to weave the North Wind’s cruelty “into something beautiful and new.” Ages 4–8. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Jr./Folio Literary. (Oct.)