Sinterklaas! Susan Cooper: "The Shortest Day" - A Reading to Herald the Winter Solstice
*The event has already taken place on this date: Sat, 12/07/2019
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Written for a theatrical production that has become a ritual in itself, Susan Cooper’s poem "The Shortest Day" captures the magic behind the returning of the light, the yearning for traditions that connect us with generations that have gone before — and the hope for peace that we carry into the future. All the things we also celebrate on Sinterklaas!
As the sun set on the shortest day of the year, early people would gather to prepare for the long night ahead. They built fires and lit candles. They played music, bringing their own light to the darkness while wondering if the sun would ever rise again. Richly illustrated by Carson Ellis with a universality that spans the centuries, this beautiful book evokes the joy and community found in the ongoing mystery of life when we celebrate light, thankfulness, and festivity at a time of rebirth. Welcome Yule!
Susan Cooper is one of our foremost children’s authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her many books have won the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and been shortlisted five times for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten for Children novel), King of Shadows and Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan wrote “The Shortest Day” for John Langstaff’s Christmas Revels, where it is performed annually across the country. She lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts.
Susan will read THE SHORTEST DAY and sign copies of her books at this event to celebrate Sinterklaas!
For families and children of all ages.
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