The Old Woman

Misty illustrations accompany a gentle text in a picture book that is overlaid with the feeling of an allegory.

An old woman spends her days with her aging dog, both of them clearly winding down to the end of their lives. Their situation is echoed in the onset of autumn which is described as the story unfolds.

The two leave their “old house that didn’t have much in it” on an outing into the hills.

It was fall, and the old woman wanted to hear the crunch of

dry leaves under her feet and the wind whispering through

the trees.

It was some time since the old woman and the dog had walked

this way but it was just as she remembered it – the rocks,

the trees, and the boulder they were heading for that

made a perfect place to sit down.

The world is slowing, settling for the sleep of winter.

The frail but erect figure throws sticks for the friendly-looking hound. The old woman (always referred to just that way) takes in the sights and sounds of the autumn woods with birds on branches and squirrels at play. In one lovely spread, the figure in the picture is of a much younger woman, dancing amid a swirl of coloured leaves; the old woman is recalling her former self and her delight at that time of being out in nature all the day long.

It is time to head home, but not before one last amazing experience.

The harvest moon rose slowly and suddenly it was there,

taking her breath away. That was the word. Magnificent – it

was magnificent. And it was so orange, or a sort of rusty color.

She thought about how to describe it – huge, looming, warm,

gentle, enormous, dreamy, graceful, autumnal –

magnificent.

Small details of a routine remembered take on a poignancy, and readers sense that this might one of the last times for an excursion like this, the last autumn to be savoured.

When they got back to the house, the old woman sat in

her chair and put her feet up. She noticed a hole in the

curtains. Tomorrow I’ll mend them, she thought.

Sleep comes. In the morning, the sun rises again, the kettle boils, and, “in her mind’s eye the old woman went up the hill again”. But, for now, the woman and the dog sit together, at peace in the early morning hour.

Schwartz, a Cape Breton librarian and author, has a long series of successful books to her credit, including her first publication, Our Corner Grocery Store, which was a Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award Finalist in 2010 and Town is by the Sea, ( www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/cm/vol23/no33/townisbythesea.html ) which won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award in 2019. She has worked with a number of different illustrators, and here a thoughtful, measured text marries perfectly with the pictures by Persian-born artist Nahid Kazemi. Several pages of illustration are in full, if muted, colour, but many tend to the more monochromatic, with delicate touches of aqua and terra cotta. A light hand with chalk pastels and coloured pencil is used, and recurring, somewhat abstract, motifs of leaves and seed pods lend a graphic tone.

The Old Woman a satisfying picture book, probably will not qualify as a group crowd-pleaser, but it will be enjoyed as a quiet story to share one-on-one.