knitting your way through a good tale

Yesterday we had our first snow fall of the season! Between the clean fresh snow and the deep dark daylight savings switcharoo, the world around us has flipped from a colorful Fall to a deep dark Winter. It feels very much like Annabelle’s sparse winter world found in one of our favorite books, Extra Yarn, written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen.

Extra Yarn has it all: a creative, independent herione; beautiful illustrations; quirky town characters; a silly foppish archduke archnemesis; and a dose of magical how’d-she-do-that? Oh, and lots of knitting. And yarn bombing. It’s like a hipster parents’ dream book. Which means I’m probably a hipster parent (Yes, I do love to knit cowls for me and for Birdie. that seals the deal, doesn’t it?). It begins when Annabelle knits a sweater from a box of found yarn, and ends with a city-wide movement and an Archduke’s evil plans. The text itself is slim, which makes bedtime reading a breeze for tired parents. But it still tells a powerful story of a girl who refuses to believe she can’t do what she knows she can. Because isn’t that the beauty of being a kid: the ability to believe that anything is possible?