5 Great Winter Stories for Kids

Winter is coming, bringing cold days and nights and blustery weather. When you don't want to leave the house one a chilly wintry day, how about curling up with a good book? Here are some great winter books to share with your kids on a dark winter night or perhaps a snow day when everyone is stuck at home.

"The Mitten" by Jan Brett is probably my favorite winter book for kids. It is the story of a mitten that gets dropped in the woods and becomes a warm and snuggly resting place for the woodland creatures that find it. Each critter squeezes itself into the mitten until it is simply about to burst from all the occupants. All is well until the big fuzzy bear has to sneeze!

"The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder is great for reading aloud during long winter days and nights. I read this book to my children last winter and they looked forward to our nightly reading until we finished the story. The based-upon-truth tale of a family surviving a long and treacherous winter on the brutal prairie of South Dakota draws you in. I read this one when I was a little girl and my own kids loved comparing the events in the story with how we wait out the winter today. This book is better for older attention spans (my youngest was eight when I read this to them).

"The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats is a simply beautiful picture book that is great for very young children. It is perfect to curl up in a warm lap and look through the pictures that tell the story of a little boy who wakes up to discover that it has snowed! The story follows his adventures on such a snowy day.

"Snow" by Uri Shulevitz is a sweet story for younger children. When it looks like snow is coming, it is usually the kids who get excited, not the grumpy grownups (that's exactly how it works in my house!). When a little boy spies one snowflake, he gets excited because one snowflake means more--and that's exactly what happens in this classic winter tale.

"Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen captures the excitement of a nighttime walk in the woods on a winter evening. This is a beautiful story about a young girl who bundles up and go out with her father on an owling adventure. The story follows their walk through the snowy woods and the other curious critters that follow their progress.