Midnight in the Mountains

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

It is midnight. A young girl in a long nightie cuddles a teddy bear as
she sits stretched out in an overstuffed wing chair. A dog, named
Trouble, is asleep at her feet. There is no light in the room except for
that which radiates from a small fire quietly flickering in a massive
hearth. Through a window, snowflakes can be seen falling gently in the
night.

“It’s quiet in the mountains. So quiet, I hear the hush of falling
snow. Mom and Dad are asleep. Patrick is asleep. Trouble is asleep. For
once, he doesn’t snore. But I’m too excited to sleep. Tonight is my
first night in the mountains!”

In her lyrical, prose-poem story, Lawson does not reveal how the young
narrator and her family have come to stay in a snowbound cabin, but the
everyday pleasures of a mountain winter day seem miraculous when viewed
through the eyes of this little girl. It is a day filled with snow
angels, rainbow-tinted icicles, snow that squeaks when you walk on it,
ice-frosted flowers, a snowshoe rabbit clad in winter white, yapping
huskies, and wolf howls. Few art forms can match watercolors for
portraying winter contrasts, and Sheena Lott’s vivid paintings capture
the story’s magic moments perfectly. Highly recommended.