Singing Away the Dark, Julie Morstad

 
Singing
Away 
the Dark,
Caroline Woodward;
Ilustradted by  Julie Morstad
simply read books, 2011


On a dark winter morning

a girl...

walking a mile to catch... the school bus.

 


I com ens narra l´experiència de l´ autora del text, Caroline:

The year before I started Grade One (we didn’t have kindergarten), a school bus was brought in to serve our small farming community. 
Before then, students rode horses to school but we lived too far away for a safe ride for me.  
My parents were thinking of buying land close to the school just so we could attend. 


 Still, our farm on the riverbanks was tucked between and behind three farms, well off any school bus route. There were five barbwire gates to get through on one mile-long farm road going east to a passable side-road. The other northwest route to the school was nearly three miles long with only two gates. But there was a steep set of creek banks on either side of an old wooden bridge that our horses did not like walking on and worse, a long stretch where the dark, thick forest hemmed in the narrow wagon trail on both sides. 
Black bears and coyotes were very common. 
In the winter, it would often be cold enough to freeze fingers, toes and exposed parts of our faces if socks weren’t pulled up properly, mittens were lost and scarves and hats weren’t pulled down to protect our faces and ears especially.

 

 
This route also had one stretch where tall spruce trees grew on each side of the road. 
It was a scary stretch because 
I could hear noises in the forest but it was too dark to see anything 
when I was walking to the school bus stop early 
in the morning.