Book Description
for Raven Makes the Aleutians by Janine Gibbons
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
These three distinct and distinctive Tlingit Raven tales are adapted from traditional Alaskan Native Tlingit storytellers and illustrated by three artists of Alaskan Native heritage. In Raven and the Tide Lady¸ trickster Raven is also a hero when he confronts the little old lady who controls the tide because she is keeping the water high, making it impossible for Raven and other creatures to gather food. Harassing her with a spiny sea urchin to comply in lowering the tide, Raven tells the tide lady that from this day forward, the tide will regularly rise and fall. Lovely images full of watery swirls accompany the story. In Raven Loses His Nose, Raven’s greed gets the better of him. First he gobbles the seal fat ball the villagers are using in a game. Then he steals their seal fat bait when they go fishing for halibut, until a hook gets caught in his nose and pulls it right off. He then must trick the villagers in order to get it back in a tale paired with stylized images echoing the style of Native Northwest traditional art. In Raven Makes the Aleutians, exhausted Raven, flying over endless water after the flood, falls from the sky and lands on a small bed of kelp. He asks an otter to bring him gravel from the ocean floor, and tosses this out to create a chain of islands in a story set against arresting, expansive paintings. More about Raven stories, the storytellers, oral tradition and the artists round out each volume. Goade’s heritage is Tlingit, Lang’s is Tsimshian, and Gibbons’s is Haida. (Ages 5–9)
CCBC Choices 2019. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2019. Used with permission.