2012 Best Books for Kids and Teens selection, Canadian Children's Book Centre
"Very few books about six-year-olds can show kids that age act in realistically brave ways. Yet a story about a girl who has to walk a mile in the dark and the snow all by herself is going to hit a chord. Even better is the fact that the book offers a solution to her problem: How to confront early morning scary darkness? The solution is practical and may inspire real life kids to do the same. Beautiful on both a visual and a literary level, Morstad and Woodward are a match made in heaven. If you’re looking for going-to-school books outside of the usual fare that also happen to be easy on the eyes, this is one of the finer offerings out there. A real treat and a great little title. Well worth discovering."
~ School Library Journal
"A delicate, brilliantly perceptive picture book about a rural child’s long journey to the school bus...This quietly stunning tale empowers all children – whether they get to school by snowshoe or SUV – to overcome fear with imagination."
~ Quill & Quire STARRED REVIEW
"Night can be a very alien world, but this beckoning book is like an invitation to come walk there."
~ Kirkus Reviews
"Alongside Julie Morstad's absolutely charming and wintry illustrations, Caroline Woodward's story provides hopeful warmth as a little girl journeys to school through the dark forest one early winter morning...Woodward's eloquently phrased words enlist the reader in an entirely moving experience through the wintry pages and snow-covered hills of Singing Away the Dark. Most notably, Woodward's poetic story provides readers, young and old, with a celebration of language through a little girl who finds consolation in the power of song."
~ CM Magazine
"When she was six, Caroline Woodward had to walk a mile in the dark and through the woods to get to her school bus stop. From this memory, she has written a beautiful story...Singing Away the Dark is a very special book, a lovely find. The illustrations are beautiful and find a perfect balance of darks and lights to create the feeling of walking in the dark through the white snow."
~ A Picture Book a Day blog
"Verse has always been present in texts for children, and it is a pleasure to read a modern children’s book that employs verse effectively. Singing Away the Dark is a poem about a young girl traversing forest and field on a dark, winter morning to catch the bus to her rural school. Thematically, the journey is about a child’s emotional resourcefulness in the face of the routine but intimidating challenge of walking alone through the dark countryside. The verse is spare, balanced, and evocative and flows nicely when read aloud.
What elevates Singing Away the Dark above the text’s potential for a reductionist, sentimental reading is the confluence of Woodward’s verse and Julie Morstad’s illustrations. Expressive, spacious, with a balance of stark and detailed representation, Singing Away the Dark’s illustrations look Canadian. The feeling they evoke along with the text speaks directly to a current conception of what childhood in this country contributes to our national sense of aesthetics and our place in the world.
I came upon my four year old “reading” Singing Away the Dark independently. Noticing my presence, she said, haltingly, “Mom… the pictures in this book are very… beautiful.” Her awe-struck reaction seemed to mirror a facet of the Canadian experience—being stunned, silent in the grip of the vast, rather uncanny beauty of the wilderness. Woodward and Morstad have succeeded in imbuing Singing Away the Dark with a nuanced emotional weight and a sensibility that speaks to something intrinsic in the experience of being Canadian.
To encounter a beautiful and very personal example of Canadiana like Singing Away the Dark is thrilling. For it to be appealing to, and appropriate for, pre-schoolers, early readers, and older children interested in poetry is even better."
~ The Deakin Review of Children's Literature, Reviewer: Matilda Roche
