Trickster: Native American Tales, A Graphic Collection
Edited by Matt Dembicki
Fulcrum Books
$22.95
ISBN: 978-1-55591-724-1
Ages 9-12
On shelves now.
This year I helped a committee come up with the 100 best books for children. This list has been produced for a while and each year we make sure to include a folk and fairytale section. The problem? With each passing year publishers produce less and less folk and fairytales for kids. In the past this was a serious category, with a variety of different authors and illustrators all battling it out for folktale supremacy. Nowadays, you can read through a big publisher’s full catalog for the upcoming season and not find a single solitary folktale gracing their lists. It’s sad really. Maybe that’s part of the reason that Trickster, as edited by Matt Dembicki, appealed so strongly to me. This isn’t just a graphic novel and it isn’t just a pairing of smart writers and great artists. Dembicki has come up with a way of collecting a wide variety of Native American folktales into a single source, done in such a way that kids will find themselves enthralled. When was the last time a book of folktales enthralled one of your kids anyway? It’s remarkable. Not that it’s a perfect collection (there are a couple things I’d change) but generally speaking I hope Trickster acts as a sign of good things to come. I wouldn’t call it the ultimate solution to the current folktale crisis but I would call it a solution. And in this day and age of publishing, there’s something to be said for that.
Twenty-one Native American storytellers are paired with twenty-one artists. Each storyteller tells a tale about a trickster type character. Coyote, raven, rabbit, raccoon, dog, wolf, beaver, and wildcat all have their day. The sheer range of storytellers is impressive, calling upon folks from Hawaii to the Eastern shore, from Alaska to Florida. Sometimes the stories are told traditionally. Sometimes they utilize a lot of modern terms (you don’t usually run across the term “crystal cathedral thinking” in a book of folktales these days). The final result is an eclectic collection, where each story plays off of the ones paired before and after it. Though oral in nature, editor Matt Dembicki finds a way to make these tales as fresh and spontaneous on the printed page as when they were told to generations of eager listeners.
I liked the sheer array of kinds of tricksters in this book. In some cases they were villains that had to be outsmarted. Other times they were unrepentant bad boys (never bad girls, alas) who always got their way. Sometimes they were wise and powerful, and other times very small and more sprite than single entity. I also enjoyed seeing similar stories repeat in different places. For example, in three different stories a trickster pretends to be dead in order to lure its prospective meal nice and close. These include “Ho
Amazing Greek Myths of Wonders and Blunders
By Michael Townsend
Dial (a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group)
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3308-4
$14.99
Ages 7-12
On shelves now.
It’s been an uncommonly good year for graphic novel Greek myths, don’t you think? From George O’Connor’s amazing new series (starting with Zeus: King of the Gods) to two different takes on the Odyssey by Gareth Hinds and Tim Mucci, I suppose we have Percy Jackson to thank for this bountiful harvest of Greek God magnificence. Of course, all the books I’ve just mentioned are best suited for older readers. Let us not forget that there are nine-year-olds out there who’d like some mythmaking as well. Preferably in color. Preferably with a bit of humor stuck in for spice. If you were to plan the perfect kid-friendly version of these myths, I’ll be frank with you, you wouldn’t dream up Michael Townsend’s Amazing Greek Myths of Wonders and Blunders. Not because it isn’t good, of course, but because unless your brain has warped in all the right places NOBODY would be able to dream up a book like this one. Townsend taps into his love of pure animal extravaganza, producing a book so madcap, wild, uninhibited, and inspired that it’ll either burst the blood vessels in both your eyes upon contact with its content or you’ll find yourself so sucked in that only a steady diet of Pixie Stix and Yo Gabba Gabba will produce the same thrill. The back of the book reads, “WARNING: These aren’t your parents’ Greek Myths!” Actually they are. But when it comes to the presentation they are 100% kid.
There are several different ways to go about presenting a book of myths. You could be chronological or choose stories that have something in common. Townsend selects nine tales of his own and if there’s any connection between them, maybe it’s how much comic gold each one can potentially yield. So it is that we read about Pandora and her descent into box-related madness, Arachne and her big head, and a Pyramus and Thisbe that rivals A Midsummer Night’s Dream in hilarity. Side characters like a smelly donkey, doomed bunnies, and some stupid sheep add a little spice on the side. Townsend always remains essentially true to the original tales, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a little fun along the way.
You don’t tend to expect to learn something new from a graphic novel, and I certainly expected to already know all the myths included in this book. ESPECIALLY the story of King Midas. What’s not to know? Midas is greedy, a god grants him the gift of turning stuff into gold, he can’t eat, his daughter gets transformed, end of story. I guess I somehow missed the entire Silenus element. Silenus, in
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword
By Barry Deutsch
Amulet Books (an imprint of Abrams)
$15.95
ISBN: 978-0-8109-8422-6
Ages 9-12
On shelves November 1, 2010
“Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl,” says the byline. Well seriously. How was I supposed to pass that up? I’d grabbed a copy of Hereville at an American Library Association conference along with a whole host of other books. I don’t think I even gave it half a glance at the time. Just nabbed, stuffed, and scooted. It was only back in the comfort of my hotel room as I repacked my bags that the byline got my attention. I sat down for a quick look. Twenty minutes later I was still reading, with no intention at all of repacking anything until I was done. In my experience, fantasy novels for children do not like to involve religion in any way, shape, or form. And children’s graphic novels? Puh-leeze. You’re as likely to find a copy of Babymouse wax rhapsodic on the topic of organized religion as you are a copy of Harry Potter. So to read Barry Deutsch’s book is to experience a mild marvel. There is religion, fantasy, knitting, some of the best art I’ve seen since The Secret Science Alliance, and a story that actually makes you sit up and feel something. This is like nothing I’ve ever encountered before, and I think it’s truly remarkable. Without a doubt, this is the best graphic novel of 2010 for kids. Bar none.
Mirka has a dream, but it’s not the kind of thing that gets a lot of support. More than anything else in the entire world she wants to fight dragons. The problem? She’s eleven, a girl, and she lives in the Jewish Orthodox town of Hereville. Still, Mirka gets a bit closer to her dream when she incurs the wrath of a witch’s pig, then does it a good deed, thereby indebting its witch to her. As it turns out, the witch tells Mirka that there is a good sword in the neighborhood, but the only way to get it is to defeat a troll. And when push comes to shove, Mirka’s going to have to use all her smarts and cunning to defeat an enemy that prizes one of the arts she loathes the most.
Think about children’s fantasy novels and religion for a moment. Religion in fantasies for kids tends to skew one of three ways. You can incorporate it and make it the entire point of the novel (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis, or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series which is technically science fiction anyway). You can make up an entirely new religion of your own (as in the novels of Frances Hardinge,
3 Comments on Review of the Day – Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch, last added: 8/17/2010
Twenty-one Native American storytellers are paired with twenty-one artists. Each storyteller tells a tale about a trickster type character. Coyote, raven, rabbit, raccoon, dog, wolf, beaver, and wildcat all have their day. The sheer range of storytellers is impressive, calling upon folks from Hawaii to the Eastern shore, from Alaska to Florida. Sometimes the stories are told traditionally. Sometimes they utilize a lot of modern terms (you don’t usually run across the term “crystal cathedral thinking” in a book of folktales these days). The final result is an eclectic collection, where each story plays off of the ones paired before and after it. Though oral in nature, editor Matt Dembicki finds a way to make these tales as fresh and spontaneous on the printed page as when they were told to generations of eager listeners.
I liked the sheer array of kinds of tricksters in this book. In some cases they were villains that had to be outsmarted. Other times they were unrepentant bad boys (never bad girls, alas) who always got their way. Sometimes they were wise and powerful, and other times very small and more sprite than single entity. I also enjoyed seeing similar stories repeat in different places. For example, in three different stories a trickster pretends to be dead in order to lure its prospective meal nice and close. These include “Ho
I want this book! And I can’t help referring you to my long roundup of trickster fiction from earlier this year: http://bookaunt.blogspot.com/2010/04/trickster-fiction.html
Robert San Souci has a whole book of trickster tales about girls called Sister Tricksters if you are looking to balance the boys stories!
Terrific post. I, too, wished they’d been more clear… noting source of each story on its opening frame would have been great.
Thanks for scratching my trickster itch with this gorgeous review!
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