Tony Wolf’s Winter Tale (1): A Wintercoat for Deers

Another series I was extremely fond of as a kid was the one authored by Tony Wolf. I always thought he was from the Outer Rim, like Richard Scarry and Rien Poortvliet (I believed both to be Dutch and can you guess which one is not). I only recently found out that Tony Wolf was in fact a pseudonym for a very Italian author, whose real name was Antonio Lupatelli. And by “recently” I mean this year. His Woodland Folk series features eight books, but I only owned four as a child, because of a very Catholic austerity that has always prevented my parents from letting me finish any collection whatsoever.

My absolute favourite was the third one, The Woodland Folk Meet the Fairies, and there’s a winter story in that too, but it’s an odd one. I’ll get to it in a minute.

All books are seasonal, they cover the span of a year, so the proper Winter Tales are always close to the end of the book. This first one is close to the end of book one, when no gnomes or fairies or any other strange creature has arrived yet and we’re just in the company of the woodland folks (although Tony Wolf is so great that he gives you hints of the other creatures since the first book).

It’s winter and the snow is falling thick. The woodland is calm and white, animals have retired into their nests and dens, some of them has fallen into slumber. But not the little mice sisters, who don’t go to sleep but take advantage of the white season to work twice as hard to make their house comfortable.

One of the three sisters, who was out to get some honey for a cake, happens to stumble upon two deers, who are out in the cold. The mouse prompts them to follow her into the woodland and the sisters start working on a coat so that the deers can be warm throughout the winter season.