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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2012, 304 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2013, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Norah Piehl
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After the extremely hard winter of 2009, S. D. Crockett asked herself, "What if winter never ended?" and from that thought, her debut novel, After the Snow, was born.
The oceans stopped working before Willo was born, so the world of ice and snow is all he's ever known. He lives with his family deep in the wilderness, far from the government's controlling grasp. Willo's survival skills are put to the test when he arrives home one day to find his family gone. It could be the government; it could be scavengers - all Willo knows is he has to find refuge and his family. It is a journey that will take him into the city he's always avoided, with a girl who needs his help more than he knows.
Recommended for Ages 12+
PART I
SNOWDONIA
In the black season of deep winter a storm of waves is roused along the expanse of the world. Sad are the birds of every meadow plain, except the ravens that feed on the crimson blood, at the clamour of harsh winter; rough, black, dark, smoky. Dogs are viscious in cracking bones; the iron pot is put on the fire after the dark black day.
--Irish, author unknown, eleventh century
1
I'm gonna sit here in my place on the hill behind the house. Waiting. And watching.
Aint nothing moving down there.
The valley look pretty bare in the snow. Just the house, gray and lonely down by the river all frozen. I got to think what I'm gonna do now that everyone gone.
But I got my dog head on.
The dog gonna tell me what to do. The dog gonna help me.
The house look proper empty--don't it, dog.
You just sit quiet in these rocks, Willo.
The dog talking sense like he always do.
I reckon the fire in the house probably gone out by now with no one to feed it cos ...
After the Snow offers readers both a warning - a stark meditation on what might happen in the future - and an opportunity to reflect on how we live, and who we are in the world, now...continued
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Today's climate discussions are often so focused on global warming that it can be easy to forget that dramatic changes in climate, including extensive periods of global cooling, have been a hallmark of earth's history for billions of years. In fact, we're in an ice age right now. Currently, earth is in what's called an interglacial period (an interval of warmer temperatures that occurs between glacial periods within an ice age) of the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, which began approximately 2.6 million years ago, and cycles between glacial and interglacial periods roughly every 100,000 - 200,000 years.
Seventeenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler was the first to credit the earth's irregular orbit for these cyclical periods of ...
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