by Moe Zilla

Created on: August 16, 2010

"Mountain men of the old west said that once each night every wild creature stirred at the same moment. And it made a rustle that broke the stillness of the sierras.

"Old Quill, the grizzled prospector, heard it every night."

It's a surprisingly poetic story about an old prospector alone in the woods. "They're just lettin' me know they're all around," he tells his burro. "So I won't feel lonesome in the dark." The lonely old man talks to his burro throughout the story, and collects feathers which he considers "gifts from my bird friends." He pans for gold dust in the creek early each morning, and it seems like an intriguing life - even before he encounters the "Surprise in the Mountains."

He sees the eyes of creatures in the dark - the green glow of a bobcat, the red glow of a jackrabbit - which makes the burro's eyes wide with fear. Natalie Savage Carlson dreamed up both the book's illustrations and text, and she keeps them simple enough to let young readers use their imagination. The bearded prospector is sketched as a caricature with a funny big nose, and he's always got a goofy smile on his face. And it seems like the burro's ears are always stretching with curiosity, while his eyes grow big with confusion at the prospector's daffy lifestyle.

The prospector scatters crumbs and leftover food for the animals to eat in winter. But he's not sure he'll even have enough food for himself to last through the winter. Following the tracks of a fox, he discovers an abandoned miner's cabin, but while he sleeps there, he still thinks about the animals outside. And at Christmas time, he chops down a small, bushy fir tree that was growing alone on the side of a mountain. He decorates it with the feathers he's collected, where eventually it's spotted by the beady eyes of a packrat.

The book's simple surprise is the packrat decides to take one of the feathers - and leave behind the shiny gold rock that he'd found in a snow slide. But I really liked how the story always stayed true to the prospector's friendly world view. The delighted prospector shares the news with his friend the burro. ("Merry Christmas, old-timer. See? We got a Christmas gift from a grateful pack rat.") He takes the burro's hee-haw is taken as a sound of celebration, and the book ends where it began, with the old man and his burro still living alone in the mountains.

The "Surprise in the Mountains" is that the impractical prosector will survive through another winter!

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