Have you heard Joe Bruchac tell a story? He's got a terrific voice for telling stories. As I read Rabbit's Snow Dance, I was able to play that voice in my head as Rabbit says:
"I want snow," he said. "I want it, I want it, I want it right now!"Rabbit's Snow Dance is by Joe and his son, James. And, I gotta say, it is absolutely delightful!
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Rabbit's Snow Dance is absolutely delightful!
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Rabbit, you see, wants the tasty leaves and buds at the top of the trees. He can't reach them, but he knows that if there was a lot of snow on the ground, he could stand on it and get those tasty treats. He knows a snow dance, too, and thinks he'll sing the song and do the dance, even though it isn't the right season to do it...
The combination of the Bruchac's storytelling and Jeff Newman's illustrations works perfectly. Here's the cover:
On the cover, Rabbit is playing a hand drum. Notice the drumstick in his left paw? Newman obviously did some research, or, maybe he knows from experience that Native peoples do not play a drum with a bare hand. So many illustrators get that wrong! Newman got it right.
Rabbit's Snow Dance, we learn on the title page inside, is a traditional Iroquois story. Back in 1993, Betsy Hearne developed a Source Note Countdown as part of her article, "Cite the Source: Reducing Cultural Chaos in Picture Books, Part 1." In model source notes, we'd learn just where the story came from, when and how it ought to be told (its cultural context), and, how the teller changed it from the version he or she heard/read it from. We don't have any of that in Rabbit's Snow Dance. Joe has provided it for other books. I wrote to a storyteller a couple of years ago. He told me that publisher's don't want to give authors space for that information. If that is the status of model notes right now, I think we're all losing out. There are, for example, six different tribal nations within the Iroquois: Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, Tuscarora, Mohawk, and Cayuga. Do they share this story? Or, does it belong to one in particular?
That said, I do think Rabbit's Snow Dance has a lot to offer as a read-aloud and highly recommend it. I'll look around for some source info and share it when I get it. Perhaps you can print it out and insert it yourself.
Details!
Rabbit's Snow Day
As told by James and Joseph Bruchac
Illustrated by Jeff Newman
Published by Dial, in 2012.
Order it from your favorite independent bookseller right away so you'll have it for the snowtimes that are upon us---not because of Rabbit's dance, but because its Wintertime. Snowtime!
3 Comments on James and Joseph Bruchac's RABBIT'S SNOW DANCE, last added: 12/30/2012
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Beverly Slapin is unable to make the comment interface work. She asked me to post this on her behalf:
"Apparently, “Azikanapo!” is Abenaki for “It snows foot wrappers!,” a descriptor of very large snow flakes. It would seem that Joe and Jesse worked carefully with the illustrator to make sure the cultural details were accurate. And each of their other children’s books published by Dial, How Chipmunk Got His Stripes (2001), Raccoon’s Last Race (2004), and Turtle’s Race with Beaver (2003), contains an author’s note that sets the story in the context of source, time, place, language and culture, something that Joe is always careful to disclose. In my workshops, I’ve stressed the importance of knowing the source and the other attributes of a story, so it puzzles me that this information was left out of Rabbit’s Snow Dance."
--Beverly Slapin
More from Beverly Slapin:
"The front matter labels the story as a “traditional Iroquois story, and the description (written by the publisher) says that Rabbit uses “a traditional drum and song, to make it snow”—yet the word is an Abenaki expression, not “Iroquois.” And I may be wrong, but “I will make it snow” does not sound like a traditional song, either. It sounds like something Rabbit might sing, but it doesn’t sound “traditional,” which may be the point of the story. Just a guess."
Thanks so much for posting this! I am a children's librarian at a public library, and I was looking for those notes, too. This book is delightful! I immediately brought it home for my kids, who are "too old" for picture books now but still are happy to curl up with a good one when I bring it home. They both loved the humor in this one.