“Grandfather’s Reminder”
Written by Alberta-Rose Bear and
Kathleen O’Reilly, Illustrated by Lindsey Bear
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95
ISBN 9-781988-783826
Grandfather’s Reminder is a warm and relatively simple contemporary tale with an “oral storytelling-feel,” but it is an ambitious undertaking: aside from its gentle teaching about respect for the land and all it provides, the handsome illustrated children’s book is written in English, Plains Cree and Saulteaux, and contains an introduction to these languages, plus a glossary. Proceeds from the sale of the hardcover book go to the Touchwood Agency Tribal Council Education Fund.
Authors Alberta-Rose Bear and Kathleen O’Reilly immediately immerse us into the prairie landscape, and illustrator Lindsey Bear provides the colour and detail in full-bleed images that depict a chokecherry-picking family in the woods beneath summer-blue skies. Many of the illustrations are bordered in a floral beadwork design. It’s August, “well before the leaves started to turn colour” and “the foxtails waved gently in the wind.” The story’s narrated by a child whose grandfather lives nearby, and when this nimosôn (Plains Cree)/nimihšōmihš (Saulteaux) Elder arrives with “white buckets” for everyone, they follow him “behind his house towards the hill” where “behind the willow trees [there] were rows and rows of chokecherry bushes.”
Grandfather places an offering of tobacco before the bushes and says a prayer of thanks “in [their traditional] language” before the foraging begins. The young female narrator notes a small scar on her grandpa’s arm, and he explains that it is his “‘reminder.’” This leads to his childhood story about picking chokecherries with his grandmother and extended family on “the alkali flats.” In his haste to reach the best berries, high on the bush, he fell, hurting himself and breaking a berry-loaded branch. His grandmother used the accident to teach him, as he explains, to “be happy with who I am and to always care for and respect Mother Earth, who provides us with what we need.” And as the practice of chokecherry picking has continued between generations of his family, the berries the grandmother and grandson deliberately returned to the earth from that broken branch populated chokecherry bushes for years to come.
I grew up in northern Saskatchewan and often heard the Cree language spoken, so it was fun to recall the rhythms of my youth and to try pronouncing some of the words, ie: paskwâwinîmowin (Plains Cree). The Cree Plains translation is by Solomon Ratt—associate professor of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at First Nations University of Canada, originally from Stanley Mission; and the Saulteaux translation is credited to Lorena Cote—also a Language and Linguistics professor at First Nations University of Canada—and Margaret Cote, who was an educator from Cote First Nation. The book’s dedicated to “the Elders who share their stories of the land, ceremonies, and languages. And for all the children who continue to learn and carry on these teachings.”
Maintaining traditional languages is an important and honorable responsibility, and it’s undertakings like the publication of this group-effort story that encourage youth to learn—in such a fun way—more about “traditional teachings and values” while also learning vocabulary.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Buddy: A Farm in the Forest Story”
Written by Jena Wagmann, Illustrated by
Alana Hyrtle
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95
ISBN 9-781988-783895
It’s not uncommon for children’s authors to transform a scenario from “real” life into a story for a picture book, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In the case of Goodsoil, SK writer Jena Wagmann’s new title, Buddy: A Farm in the Forest Story, the actual-experience-to-the-page formula works doggone well.
The retired school administrative assistant-turned-farmer (and writer!) has paired her talents with Nova Scotia illustrator Alana Hyrtle—and if I’m guessing correctly, this is actually a mother-daughter team—to create a heartwarming story with delightful watercolour illustrations about adopting a scruffy Shih Tzu who’d been abandoned in the forest by its previous owner. “Buddy” was “definitely not the handsomest dog they had ever seen—his eyes bulged out of his head, his teeth stuck out on one side of his mouth, and his little black nose did not sit in the middle of his face.”
Buddy appears on the cover facing the moon and a star-filled sky above a forest, and it was easy to fall for the “little bit crooked” canine hero who at one time had a loving owner, but was passed on to a neglectful man. In time, the “dirty and matted” dog “who had nobody to play with” even forgot his own name. We empathize as the dog becomes weak in the forest, and rejoice when a crowing rooster (the dog and Barred Rock rooster are able to speak to one another) alerts him to the clearing where Buddy finds “a farm in the forest,” and works his way into the heart of the female farmer and her family.
I appreciated the colour and variety of illustrations in this 63-page book for young readers. They range from a double-paged, full-bleed of the entire farm—complete with round bales, various animals, a porch swing on the farmhouse verandah, a weathervane on the barn, and a well-hoed garden—to tiny close-ups, and there are several illustrations that show Buddy with his five new human “siblings” and his new “parents.”
I also enjoyed the humorous touches, especially evident in expressions like “The sight of you would probably scare the manure out of her!” (this from the anthropomorphic rooster) and, after the children teach Buddy a repertoire of tricks, the “farmer’s husband” (love the play on the more common “farmer’s wife”) says “Well, I’ll be a beaver’s dam!”
There’s also a character in the book who is not a fan of the new pet. “Aunt Bea found him to be so ugly she even refused to eat if they were together in the same room.” Ah, but here’s the moral: “… it’s what’s inside that makes us beautiful,” the farmer tells Buddy.
In Wagmann’s afternotes we learn that Buddy enjoyed nine years with the author and her family, a time in which is “destroyed a lot of socks” and “rolled in cow manure every chance he got.”
This book is everything an effective children’s title should be: well-written, fun, relatable, and lovely to look at. Another fine YNWP publication.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
