Others spend the winter as spiderlings, feeding on the yolk of the eggs from which they’ve hatched and awaiting longer days and warmer temperatures. Many weather the cold months as eggs, tucked under leaf litter, into a rotted log, or snuggled beneath the bark of a tree. It is true that most spiders don’t really do winter. I had always assumed spiders were either dormant during winter or had died after the first hard frost.Īs I watched this spider make its way across the top of the glistening January snow, I had to consider a new possibility: could spiders, with their soft bodies and fragile-looking legs, really be able to brave winter’s chill and boldly walk about on the snow? I bent down to inspect more closely its spindly legs, stretched out across the snow. I had stopped to catch my breath when I noticed a dime-sized brown spider crawling on top of the snow. I met my latest renegade while cross country skiing out my back door in Hancock, New Hampshire, on a sunny winter day. Other charming eccentrics: the tamarack, a conifer that loses its needles every winter male seahorses that give birth to thousands of live babies and the short-tailed shrew, a tiny mammal that uses a lizard-like venom to paralyze its prey. As a child I was the sole member of my own duck-billed platypus club, endeared to this creature with the bird-like bill, beaver-style tail, and shocking ability to lay eggs. Perfect for readers aged 9 years and up.I have always admired nature’s mutineers: animals and plants that thwart the recognized system and do their own thing. This edition celebrates its 30th anniversary of first publication. The Snow Spider won the 1986 Smarties Grand Prix and it was awarded the Tir na n-Og Award in 1987. Against the shimmering backdrop of a magical domed city, Gwyn has to battle evil and heal a fractured family.Ĭombining all of Jenny Nimmo’s trademark elements ? unusual but compelling characters, stunning magic and a rich, vibrant story ? The Snow Spider Trilogy includes the sequels Emlyn’s Moon and The Chestnut Soldier and is perfect for lovers of Jenny Nimmo’s other fantasy books such as Charlie Bone and Henry and the Guardians of the Lost. Later he discovers the wind has sent something back: the snow spider.

On his ninth birthday, Gwyn is given a brooch and told to cast it into the wind. ‘Time to find out if you are a magician, Gwyn.’Ī spine-tingling magical fantasy trilogy from Jenny Nimmo, the author of Charlie Bone.

The snow spider