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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