Book Reviews

Understanding Our Worlds and Ourselves

Caroline Stellings (Author)
The Malagawatch Mice and the Cate Who Discovered America. Cape Breton University Press
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C. J. Taylor (Author)
Spirits, Fairies, and Merpeople: Native Stories of Other Worlds. Tundra Books
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Debby Waldman (Author)
Clever Rachel. Orca Book Publishers
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Jane Barclay (Author)
Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion. Tundra Books
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Reviewed by Sarika P. Bose

In these picture books, the non-human forces and inhabitants of the world become the medium for answering questions about the nature of human beings, their place in their community, and their relationship to the natural world. In each book, the focal characters, and sometimes the whole community, learn valuable lessons about people’s capacity for adaptability, transformation, empathy, and courage. The desire and ability to communicate effectively resolve many of the challenges the characters face.

Jane Barclay’s Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion attempts to explain the meaning of Remembrance Day ceremonies by focusing on a grandson’s questions to his grandfather about wartime experiences. Through the child’s eagerness to understand his grandfather and the Remembrance Day ceremonies, lost experience is recovered, as is the significance of ceremonial acts. On a personal level, the past lives again: the grandfather is again the innocently arrogant young soldier who was “as proud as a peacock” to join the battle and is transformed as fear on the battlefield forces him to be “as brave as a lion.” Though the traumas of war such as the loss of a dear friend or the fear of going into battle are acknowledged, and human experience and response given life through the animal similes, Renné Benoit’s gentle watercolours and the communication of the old man’s life story through faded photographs and memories become distancing techniques that protect the child reader from feeling any trauma. After hearing the stories, the child is left with a sense of quiet melancholy about war, but a new sense of connection with his grandfather.

The “spirits, fairies and merpeople” in C.J. Taylor’s retelling of seven First Nations myths teach the Mi’kmaq, Kahnawake, Dakota, Coos, Ojibwa, Ute and Cree peoples how to communicate and live harmoniously with nature, sometimes wholly transforming human beings into mythical creatures or nature spirits (“Water Lily Finds Her Love”), and sometimes punishing humans for misusing or wasting Nature’s gifts (“The Little People”). The Ute and Cree creation stories make the reader aware of the grand forces of nature, which determine human existence. The dual face of Nature is shown in the malevolent presence in “The Lodge Eater,” in which a foundling baby is frighteningly transformed into a devouring spirit beast, and in the self-sacrificing mermaid, Minnow, whose only concern is her human family’s safety (“The Mermaid”). The straightforward, storyteller style is emphasized by the setting of the stage which prefaces “The Little People”; the preface might have framed the stories more effectively if the story had been the first in the collection, however. Taylor’s own technicoloured acrylic paintings illustrate the book in a lively way. Despite the pathos of some stories, such as “The Mermaid,” the illustrations are often joyous, showing human beings dancing and playing in the fields. The illustrations’ perspectives are varied, however, with portraits of strong-featured women contrasting with stylized landscapes containing hunters, dancers, or animals.

Caroline Stellings attractively illustrates her story, The Malagawatch Mice and the Cat Who Discovered America, in watercolours. Here, anthropomorphized animals face a twofold problem: the intrusion of a historic enemy into their comfortable lives and the stubbornly rebellious determination of an individual to find a solution that may acerbate rather than solve the crisis. The contented community of a large extended church-mouse family can only see a monster in “Henry the Horrible,” a predatory ginger cat who has moved into the church, and reluctantly envisions only standard solutions to the threat, such as fooling the cat or leaving their home. Initially, the patriarch mouse, Grandpa, is isolated by his faith in the underlying good nature of the enemy, a belief not even shared by the cat himself. The solution that not only allows the mice to remain in their home but also integrates the cat into their community is, perhaps unexpected. Textual documentation and oral history (from a friendly community of Mi’kmaq mice) convince both Henry and the mice of the cat’s noble ancestry. Faith in moral inheritance leads to a complete change of attitude by both parties and a happy future of mutual cooperation.

Clever Rachel, a retelling of a Jewish folktale by Debby Waldman, is colourfully illustrated in acrylics by Cindy Revell. The lesson here is that while individual excellence should be encouraged, cooperation is the only path to wisdom. Rachel, a decidedly undomestic little girl, overcomes gender prejudice to prove her cleverness as she solves intellectual problems (in the form of riddles). Jacob, an arrogant little boy, acknowledges his own limitations as he accepts her help. During the course of the story, the readers are guided through the process of solving riddles; readers are then encouraged to solve the set of riddles at the end themselves.

The lessons taught in all these books suggest they would function particularly well as a means of engaging children in conversations about problem-solving, the conventions of myth, the past experiences of the adults they know, and the place of human beings in the natural world.

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This review has not yet appeared in Canadian Literature.

MLA: Bose, Sarika P.. Understanding Our Worlds and Ourselves. canlit.ca. Canadian Literature, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2010.

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