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If you’re looking for picture books exploring friendships of massive proportions, then these two latest delights are for you. Perfect for melting any sized heart!  Blue Whale Blues, Peter Carnavas (author, illus.), New Frontier Publishing, 2015.   On first glance, I noticed something different about Peter Carnavas‘ most recent creation compared to his previous works. […]

by Lisa Doan Darby Creek / Lerner  2014 Smart kid, dumb parents, and a menacing whale shark! What more could a kid want from a book?  Jack is a sheltered kid on the cusp of puberty living with his Aunt Julia safely in Pennsylvania. Or at least he was living safely until his Aunt met with misfortune and Jack was forced to call his world-traveling parents home from their latest scheme,

By Sarah Hansen

Music today is usually categorized by the genre to which it most stylistically relates. A quick scroll through the iTunes genres sections reveals the familiar categories, among them Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Country, Classical, and Alternative. Songs or musical compilations today seem to have a readily apparent identity.

For the Inuit people of Alaska, this is not the case. Inuit music is distinguished according to its function rather than style, and most songs serve either a secular, social, or religious purpose. Many religious songs tend to be reserved for traditional ceremonies, while secular songs might be focused on the individual. Secular songs are sung to ease the birth of a child, to locate lost objects, or to cure illnesses.

There are, of course, many sub-categories of songs. For example, the Inuit of St. Lawrence Island, have terms that distinguish between nighttime and daytime singing, while the Inuit of the Northwest region of Alaska categorize songs by whether they are used in games, in stories, for dance, or in traditional ceremonies.

One such traditional ceremony that is still important for Alaskan Inuit culture is the whaling ceremony. All of the stages in the whaling process are celebrated, and there are songs to reinforce the hunting materials, bring forth the whales, and control the weather. Once the captain and crew return with the captured whales, the materials of the animal are distributed at a celebration called Nalukataq, which takes place during the month of June. Nalukataq, literally meaning “to throw and toss up,” refers to the whaler’s skin toss dance, and celebrates the bounty and distribution of Quaq (whale meat) and Muktuk (whale blubber).

Nalukataq Blanket Toss Barrow, 2006 by By Floyd Davidson. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

To celebrate Nalukataq, communities gather to sing songs, dance, and take part in the traditional whale-toss, in which men and women in the community hold a Nalukataq blanket, generally made from seal or walrus skin, and toss the captains and captains’ wives up into the air. Traditionally, the wives of captains would throw out tools and food whilst being thrown into the air to mimic the distribution of whale meat among members of the community, but the tradition has since evolved to be candy thrown out to children.

As can been seen from Nalukataq, aspects of the original ceremony live on, but traditions have changed with the times. Festivals are often associated with US holidays, such as Independence Day, or with special community events. Although music might not still be used as frequently to help cure illnesses or ease childbirth, it still plays an important role in Alaskan Inuit culture, and will certainly continue to do so.

All information from this post is taken from an article on Alaskan Inuit music from Oxford Music Online.

Sarah Hansen is a Publicity Assistant at Oxford University Press.

Oxford Music Online has made several articles available freely to the public, including its entry on Inuit Music. Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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The post Songs of the Alaskan Inuit appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Just finished up these Ocean themed critters! My fave is the whale. 

They’re available now in the Etsy Store!

get them now at:
Etsy    or     TpT

by David Lucas Candlewick Press 2012 The unbeaten Skeleton Pirate who refuses to accept defeat is beaten not once but twice in this quirky picture book. The Skeleton Pirate knows one thing: that he will never be beaten, and will fight to the, uh, death to prove it. But when a band of pirates chains him up and throws him over board... he still will not accept defeat. rescued by a Mermaid he is

words by julie fogliano pictures by erin e. stead. roaring brook press 2013 a very old school picture book poetic in word and image now this is what i’m talking about. the title is the premise a set of instructions for what you need to do in order to see a whale it starts with a window and quickly moves to a landscape of the mind the text and instructions more of a tone poem told legato

Chasing the Great White Whale   by Eric Kimmel illustrated by Andrew Glass  Feiwel & Friends 2012  Finally! A version of Melville's classic I can actually finish! In one sitting! With pictures even!  So, up front, I'm no fan of Moby Dick. I have tried and tried and simply cannot traverse the literary muck and mire of Melville's meandering meditation. I get about 60 or 70 pages in and I start

Surreal, a photo by 9567 on Flickr.

Taken during my morning walk.

Yesterday I had 50 minutes to kill so I went to the nearest beach. I looked out to the ocean and saw a whale leaping out of the ocean, blowing it’s spout, flipping it’s tail and flippers alternately. It’s flipper was nearly all white, brought to mind Moby Dick. I noticed people had gathered on balconies and at the far end of the pier to watch. Someone who’d been watching too stopped to talk to me. He said he’s been living here all his life and had never seen one so close before.

It's being called "a whale of a problem," and not just by me. According to research published in the Journal of Heredity, endangered Southern Resident orcas are mating within their family groups. This "genetic bottleneck" means the whales could be more susceptible to diseases, early mortality or failure to produce calves. The study's lead author is Michael J. Ford, a scientist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

The prompt for Illustration Friday this week is swell, which according to the dictionary, means to grow in size, or a rise in ocean waves, or stylish, fashionably dressed, or first-rate. It reminded me of this image from my new portfolio, and a story that could go with it:

The sea swell carried the bowl off the windowsill and out into the ocean, where the goldfish met face to face with a whale. “That’s just swell,” thought the goldfish. The whale thought, “Hooray! A new friend.”

To celebrate the United Nations International Year of the Sneeze, I present my interpretation of this traditional English nursery rhyme.
Pen and ink with watercolour 17cm x 25cm. Click to enlarge.

I think the whole Omega-3 craze is bullshit.
Woodcut with digital colour. 20cm x 30cm. Click to enlarge.

Spermzilla escapes from the North East England Stem Cell Institute.
Acrylic on paper 31cm x 41cm. Click to enlarge.

I had been working on this illustration last week, and this week added a character. It is always fun to have friends join you on an adventure.