Catching the Wind – Nils-Johan Jørgensen

Thomas is aboard no ordinary boat in ‘Catching the Wind’. After hoisting the Spinnaker, a flying parachute, and running before the strongest of the four winds, the magic sail lifts the boat towards the sky and moves it to a different time and place. Thomas is hurtled through the sky, past a magnificent array of colours. He must start a new adventure in the North Pole…

‘Laura’ loved her school. Her teacher introduced her to an ancient Greek writer known by the name of Homer. He lived far away from her midnight land and Laura wondered if he had heard stories about her land, dominated by summer light and winter darkness…

It is sixty-five meters long and half a metre wide. It is an embroidery of woollen thread, red, yellow, two shades of green and three shades of blue, on a grey linen backing. ‘A Living Tapestry’ follows Pani’s escapades to the Tapestry Museum in Bordeaux, Normandy. Standing in front of a very old masterpiece, Pani considers the history behind the design…

These three beautifully crafted but very different stories will delight imaginative children everywhere.

An unexpected but most welcome addition to the Wind series,  once again Jørgensen has crafted an excellent and imaginative selection of stories which are satisfying, inspiring, and gently instructive for those with an adventurous spirit.

In this latest collection the reader is heartily welcomed to the delights and magic of the aurora borealis, introduced to Homer’s The Odyssey, through the eyes of a child, and a study of the details of the bayeux tapestry.  These jaunts into history and culture are fantastic jump off points for the excavation of the human journey.

The wonderment goes hand in hand with the educational aspect of each story and is a great platform to learn with your children, or just to have your lust for knowledge rekindled, and to see the world through the eyes of the young, who are slowly becoming aware of the vastness and complexity of civilisation.

The discovery of events both fictional and real, are an interlaced exploration of history and myth, a celebration of what we have achieved as a people.  Here the reader escapes and learns in the best possible way about the legacy left from generation to generation that should to be safeguarded and built on.

As well as the words, each of the accompanying illustrations is perfectly tailored to capture the mood of stories, from a glimpse of the tapestry, to the beautiful sparseness of the Northern lands, and the dramatic action scenes from Odysseus’ adventures.

Catching the Wind carries on the series tradition of capturing the beauty of nature and life, and after five books I still love each entry for its inventive nature and, you could say its breath of fresh air in amongst the many less than  subtle stories.