21st December The Solstice

As I sit here pondering the longest day of the year and the lack of summer weather, my daughter is about to embark on a walking holiday in Scotland on the shortest day of the year. Is she mad or intrepid? The idea of walking in snow is too much for me, but I know that if you live in the Northern Hemisphere you cannot let the weather dictate your every move. You put on warm clothes and wet weather gear and go out! Where I live there isn't much need for this and we just complain if it is too wet or too hot, flooding or in drought.

The morphology of the word solstice fascinates me. I knew 'sol' was Latin for 'sun', but had to look up the rest... 

The ancients added sol to -stit- (a participial stem of sistere, which means "to stand still") and came up with solstitium. Middle English speakers shortened solstitium to solstice in the 14th century.

I looked up 'solstice' books and found this is coming next year. Sounds perfect.

Just two times each year - an event called the solstice - Earth leans closest to our home star, the Sun. Since ancient times, people have used the Sun as a timekeeper. They knew that the length of daylight changes in a regular way and celebrated the solstice as a signal of changing seasons. The Longest, Shortest Day imparts scientific and cultural information using the global experience of a solstice as its scientific core, and the descriptions of children's lives at each latitude as the cultural narrative. It is a browsable nonfiction appealing to informationally minded thinkers aged 7-11. Enhancing the text and illustrations are fascinating infographics about geography, hours of sunlight, sunrise and sunset times, and how the Earth's tilt creates solstices and seasons. A global event needs a global perspective: non-traditional families, interesting facts that crop up in each account (e.g. in the Chinese entry we learn that pandas need to play or else they get sad). Plus, illustrators for each location represent their home countries with authority and beauty. 

It is easier to celebrate the Winter solstice with picture books and craft, probably because it is at Christmas in the Northern hemisphere and very noticeable. The thought of making lanterns excites me.

Here's some and look at who the authors are: Susan Cooper, Harriet Ziefert, Jean Craighead George and Marion Dane Bauer.

And a couple for the Summer solstice

  

And of course there's lots of separate titles that celebrate Winter and Summer. Perhaps I need to look at books about Summer ready for when school starts again...if we do have some summer weather.