Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest

Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest

"Shape-changing Raven steals the sun from the Sky Chief to light the dark world in this handsome rendering from the fund of lore shared by the Native groups of the northwest coast. "Raven changed himself into a pine needle. He fell down from the tree and floated on the water. When the girl drank again, she swallowed the pine needle." In time the girl gave birth to a strange-looking child. "Who do you think the child was?" Gerald McDermott's occasional questions, inserted as a storytelling device, seem a bit inane on the written page but invite the listener into the narrative. The Sky Chief an his elders lavish attention on the "curious, wonderful child," who is quite cranky until allowed to see into the nested boxes holding the sun. Once allowed to play with the golden ball, the child transforms himself again into Raven, flying off to hang the bright globe in the dark sky. Drawn in the style of totem art, Raven is a striking presence in a cut-out figure of red, green, blue, and black appearing against softly painted gouache landscapes of watery blues and greens. McDermott's economical story line is well shaped and laid out in short lines of text against the fully illustrated, luminous pages. Bold design elements are softened through the use of earth tones. All scenes are spare and expansive, dominated always by wonderful shadings of light - even in the somber gloom of earth at the outset. The Sky Chief's daughter has a pretty, human face, and her squatty figure makes her appear almost as a child next to the more stylized figures of her father and his elders. The naive view suits the simplicity of the scheme, and the mythic elements of the story are masterfully rendered."

Bush, Margaret A. "Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest." The Horn Book Magazine, July-Aug. 1993, p. 470+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A14036440/AONE?u=lond95336&sid=AONE&xid=005e15fe. Accessed 11 June 2018.

McDermott, Gerald

First Voyager Books

Reprint Edition August 2001

Copyright © 1993 by Gerald McDermott

Softcover book, 27.9 x 0.3 x 22.9 cm

English