Book Review - All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings

January, 2026
by Becky Huffman Givens, Class of Spring ‘24

Book Review - All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings, by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein.

In the days leading up to Christmas this year I read a delightful Advent book about animals. When Gayle Boss’s boys were young, she began to look for an advent calendar that was more than just a Christmas calendar. Not finding anything, she created her own. Behind each little cardboard door was an animal and a story that was rooted in the hope that comes after the darkness and loss of the dark season of winter.

Book Cover

In 2016, twenty-five years after that first cardboard calendar, she published this lovely book, which was reprinted in a hardcover special edition in 2022. Each chapter features a different animal. It begins with a quote and a beautiful woodcut illustration, followed by a short story about how this animal survives winter - how its body prepares for the cold and the lack of food, how it survives the long dark days, and new beginnings with the coming of spring. A young child will love the picture and the story, an adult will also see how each amazing animal is also a picture of human life on this planet. When life goes cold and dark, literally and figuratively, we can trust that the world will warm again and bring renewed life. These are lessons our children need to grow up hearing and seeing, and lessons that adults need to be reminded of.

Gayle Boss says in her introduction: “The practice of Advent has always been about helping us absorb the mystery that death, without fail, opens to a new beginning. Other-than-human creatures - sprung, like us, from the Source of Life - manifest this mystery without question or doubt. In a world that is unraveling, turning and lurching into new patterns and forms, they’re waiting with reliable guidance.”

This is a delightful book, full of life and hope, and I highly recommend it.