In 2021, The New York Times published an article titled "Monitoring the Weather at the Edge of the World." It was about a farmer named Marsibil Erlendsdottir, who was running one of 71 manned weather stations in Iceland.
Her job, the article said, was to check the readings on the weather instruments at her station every three hours day and night, no matter the weather, and record the information and send it to the office in Reykjavik, the capital.
When Nelly Buchet's mother sent the article to her, Buchet was living in "a really small apartment, in a very small room, in a very big city," she says. "I surprised myself by being envious of this woman who lives in super harsh conditions in Iceland."
Envious and inspired to write her new children's book, The Weather Keeper.
"In a yellow light house, On the edge of the world, Lives my mother, A Weather Keeper, Who reads the sky," writes Buchet. The story is told from the point of view of the daughter who has left, gone to the big city, and is deciding whether she wants to return to follow in her mother's footsteps.
The manuscript landed on illustrator Elizabeth Haidle's desk at a serendipitous time. "I had just bought a one-way ticket to Iceland," she laughs, "so I thought I would just try to see, what is the weather like? What is the sky doing?" Haidle calls it "investigative illustration," and says being there in person helped her comprehend the vastness of the landscape. "The sky was so unobstructed and vast that there could be an entire weather system on the one corner pouring down rain, sideways wind. And then you could look on the other corner and the sun is beaming through. I just couldn't believe how much variety there was at any given moment."
Haidle needed a way to convey that variety, so she turned to her background in comic books. She created spreads with diagonal slashes on the page to depict multiple weather conditions in one day. And, to illustrate the repetitive nature of the weather keeper's job, waking up every three hours, "I thought… we need to break this down into paneled format," Haidle explains. "What is that like, to turn on the light, put on your boots, leave the room, come back, do that over and over?"
Even though the weather keeper spends most of her days recording and sending numbers, Buchet wanted the reader to understand that it's an important job for the people that rely on her. She writes, "Are there clouds? Is it windy? Is a storm coming? The fishermen should know, To stay safe in the water, To catch fish, To feed their own. And strangers, too. Like me, like you."
"One of my favorite books when I was little was Miss Rumphius," Buchet says. The children's book, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, is about a woman who plants lupines to make the world more beautiful. "When I wrote this story, I kind of wanted to do something similar," says Buchet, "where this woman is not famous. I'm not putting a name in there, but it's a life worth living."
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