So the shortest day has come! Though it might be outshined by the dazzling delights of the holiday season, the winter solstice has long been at the root of popular December traditions. Newbery medalist Susan Cooper’s brand new picture book The Shortest Day reconnects us to the centuries-long solstice history. The book is based on Cooper’s beloved poem by the same title, and offers the sweeping, folkloric origins of shepherding light through the darkest time of the year into a bright future.

Caldecott Honoree Carson Ellis achieves a profound pictorial interpretation of the poem, with breathtaking scenes that capture the vastness of the dark and the enduring sparks of light within it. Muted and wind-chilled gouache paintings illustrate the poem’s reverence for the somber beauty of communal resilience in the dead of winter. The sun is depicted as a lumbering, weary creature using a crutch, collapsing against mountains as civilization gathers and prepares for the long night. In one of the first spreads, the reader is greeted with foliage in the foreground, dry and dead but dotted with dandelions. Their white seed heads are backdropped by birds flying in formation -- all nods to renewal, hope, and the inevitable cycles of nature.

Clever readers will find that as time passes and dark yields to light, parallels between the past and the present remain -- especially in the intentions of peace, joy, and thankfulness that are a guiding light through the darkest season. Cooper’s poem and Ellis’ illustrations join in resonant communion, divining in itself a ritual celebration of light and hope. A deeply reverent welcoming of Yuletide and humble harkening to collective tradition.

It was an absolute delight to reconnect with Carson Ellis and chat about her personal connection to the winter solstice, as well as her process for illustrating this masterpiece (which is featured in Issue 10: Color’s top book recommendations!). The award-winning illustrator graced the cover of Illustoria’s Issue 8: Home, with a cozy, snow-capped scene quite reminiscent of The Shortest Day. If you love our interview below, be sure to check out our full-length interview with Ellis and her husband Colin Meloy (lead singer of the Decemberists, and creative collaborator) in Issue 8, available here. We hope you enjoy, and happy holidays to all!

1. Can you talk about how you used color to help illustrate the relationship between light and dark in the poem?

Because the poem is about the Winter Solstice, light is really central to the book. It’s about the slow dying of the light as the days get shorter and the joyous celebration of its return on the shortest day. I thought a lot about the the way the light changes with the seasons: the bright, overexposed-feeling light of summer; the amber light of fall (my favorite); the thin, blueish light of winter. If we live in a place with distinct seasons, we know these shifts in light and the colors in the landscapes around us throughout the year and we probably all have emotional responses that correspond to them. So I wanted the light in the illustrations to reflect the light of the shortening days and evoke the feelings, often of gloom and dread, that go along with that.

2. One recurring image that we found striking is of the sun as a person's head. What did this image represent for you when illustrating the poem?

It’s an old, cross-cultural idea: the depiction of the sun as a man who becomes slowly more decrepit until he dies and is then reborn on the winter solstice. I did a little research about solstice traditions and this sun man came up in various cultural traditions throughout history. Which probably means that it’s a deeply resonant image for a lot of us. I know it was for me.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood panel, 46 in × 63 3⁄4 in. — Pieter Bruegel the Elder, *Hunters in the Snow*, 1565, oil on wood panel, 46 in × 63 3⁄4 in.

3. What was the biggest challenge of illustrating The Shortest Day? What was the most rewarding?

The biggest challenge was to come up with the right approach to The Shortest Day. Initially I had envisioned a book about a bunch of merry medieval villagers making their way to some kind of solstice celebration. I wanted the book to look like a Breugel painting. Breugel was a 16th century Dutch painter. I love his winter scenes and also all of the details about medieval life that you can glean from them. So I guess initially I wanted to use this book as an opportunity to do that. I planned to do some research about medieval life and then to set this book squarely in northern Europe in the 16th century so that it could be a glimpse into that world. But that’s not really what The Shortest Day is about. I corresponded with Susan and she had a much more complicated and profound vision for the book. The story she wanted it to tell was about the threat that winter posed to early humans, how meaningful the symbolism of the solstice was in light of that, and how our contemporary winter holiday traditions grew out of that and connect us to our ancestors. This is a much more interesting book! But it was a more daunting book too. I spent a month just thinking about it before I even started sketching. Though, once I did solve the question of how to illustrate it, The Shortest Day was a joy to work on. I think the most rewarding part of it was figuring out a way to tell the story Susan wanted to tell and also figuring out how to paint the sweeping atmospheric landscapes that I was envisioning for the first few spreads. I didn’t know how to do that initially and it took a lot of experimenting to get it right.

4. How do you celebrate the shortest day of the year?

I don’t really have any solstice traditions - I haven’t celebrated it in the past. But last year the winter solstice coincided with the full moon which made it - to my mind - an extra powerful day. So I put a jug of water outside before bed, let the moon shine down on it all night, and then the next day, I drank it! Some of my family drank it too. Some declared this too witchy, and abstained.

The Father Christmas Letters by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Shortest Day can be found in Illustoria’s Issue 10: Color’s On Our Bookshelf feature, which is available to order now. You can also find it at bookstores and libraries across the country. Many thanks to Candlewick for helping sponsor this issue and for this interview opportunity. To read a full length interview with Carson Ellis, be sure to check out Issue 8: Home.