Dad, I Miss You

Written by Nadia Sammurtok

Illustrated by Simji Park

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-482-0

40 pp.

Ages 9-12

August 2024

 

Dad, I Miss You is a conversation that only takes place in the minds of a father and son as the boy is returned, again, to a residential school, leaving his father, mother, and two-year-old sister behind. It is a heartbreaking exchange that never takes place in person but tells us so much about the family and what they went through.

From Dad, I Miss You, written by Nadia Sammurtok, illustrated by Simji Park

As a young boy recalls catching a fish, having learned from his father, his father watches his son out the window, also thinking about how proud he is for feeding the family and sure the boy will be a good provider for his own family when he is a man.

From Dad, I Miss You, written by Nadia Sammurtok, illustrated by Simji Park

When the child hears the plane that will transport him far from his home, in his mind he tells his dad that he doesn't want to go back there. Hearing the same plane, his father is hopeful that it will be over soon if the boy just does what they say. After all, "They said it will be better this way." (p. 9)

 

And as the boy packs his things, he wishes that his dad would stop them from taking him and not to let them take his baby sister too. His dad has the same worries about his daughter.

From Dad, I Miss You, written by Nadia Sammurtok, illustrated by Simji Park

As the boy is taken away and endures the horrors of residential school, from the cold and lack of food to punishment and loss of language, his father keeps hope that his child is learning and will be home soon. But things are different when he returns home. Thankfully there is still love and acceptance and the wisdom to understand what he may be going through.

I know you've forgotten some parts of yourself, but after some time, you'll find yourself again. (p. 37)

Every story that speaks to the residential school experiences of Indigenous families is heartbreaking. But Nadia Sammurtok approach of getting into the unspoken thoughts of both son and father remind us of the emotional toll on both parents and children. While the son knows what he must live with at the school, from hunger and abuse, loss of culture and homesickness, his father does not know. The boy's family has been told a sanitized and misleading version of what his child will learn and do, but without first-hand accounts they cannot know what happens there. Still, as both father and son show stoicism, revealing their feelings and thoughts only to themselves, Nadia Sammurtok shows us the depth of their connection. They think about similar things but from different perspectives and readers can only hope that this connection will sustain their relationship through the hardships of a child taken away to residential school. (As the story is based on Nadia Sammurtok's own family history of residential school separation, we hope that they found strength in that connection.)

From Dad, I Miss You, written by Nadia Sammurtok, illustrated by Simji Park

Simji Park, an artist based in England and the Netherlands, uses pencil and watercolours to create scenes of great heart and feeling. Just as the dialogue between father and son is repressed, Simji Park's illustrations are subdued, using soft tones and quiet lines to depict simple scenes of home and school. She still conveys the muted comfort of home and the angst of the residential experience, but she does so with hushed ambience, reflecting the unspoken dialogue between father and son.

Every book that speaks about the tragedy of families separated when Indigenous children were forced into residential schools is unique and revealing. By focusing on the unspoken thoughts of a parent and a child, Nadia Sammurtok makes us see something a little different. The bond between a parent and a child is stretched and almost severed and yet there is hope that there is enough resilience to reunite and strengthen. Dad, I Miss You is a story of tragedy but also one of the capacity of family to reconnect and prevail.

 

• • • • • • •

Teaching about the residential school experiences is a challenging one for teachers and parents. A QR code appended to the book links to downloads of educational support materials. 

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In My Anaana's Amautik

Written by Nadia Sammurtok

Illustrated by Lenny Lishchenko

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-252-9

24 pp.

Ages 3-7

September 2019

Love and security are often found with a person or a place but to find them together in both is extraordinary. In My Anaana's Amautik is about a child finding them both in the pouch at the back of its mother's parka.

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

In its anaana's amautik, a child travels, sleeps and enjoys the closeness of being with its mother and experiencing its world of land, water and sky from a position of safety and intimacy. They feel the sun and compare it to the warmth of her skin, see the clouds and compare them to being swaddled, and are reminded of summertime flowers with her scent.

In my anaana's amautik, I feel safe. The protection of the hood around me is like my own tiny iglu. I love peeking out from inside my anaana's amautik. (pg. 11)

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

The child likens everything about being in its anaana's amautik to those familiar attributes of its own Arctic environment: sun, clouds, flowers (like Arctic poppy, blueberry and dock), cottongrass, iglu, ocean, stream. But most importantly it's about home.

In my anaana's amautik, I feel loved. The gentleness of her movements reminds me of her hugs and her love for me. I love my anaana's amautik. (pg. 19)

While the earlier books of Nadia Sammurtok's which I reviewed (The Caterpillar Woman, 2016; Siuluk: The Last Tuniq, 2018) had a distinct ambiance of darkness and legend, In My Anaana's Amautik is all lightness and affection. While still based in the Inuit culture, Nadia Sammurtok's heritage, and the Arctic environment, In My Anaana's Amautik enfolds the readers in the experience familiar to the very young Inuit. It brings us into that amautik to feel the bond of mother and child and of the land.

From In My Anaana's Amautik by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Lenny Lishchenko

In a series of double-spread illustrations depicting only a child's head or hand, the only body parts that would ever be exposed from rest in an amautik, Lenny Lishchenko also focuses on the feeling, not the logistics. She makes the sun, or the clouds, the cottongrass or the water, all things with which the child analogizes their amautik experiences, the emphasis. In this way, the child is but a small part of everything but still part of it all.

In My Anaana's Amautik is an experiential picture book filled with the sensory reality of being close and safe and warm and loved. Oh, that every child could feel this.

Siuluk: The Last Tuniq

Written by Nadia Sammurtok

Illustrated by Rob Nix

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-178-2

28 pp.

Ages 5-8

April 2018

The Inuit stories about the Tuniit are of a legendary people akin to friendly giants.  They were considered to be immensely strong, massive in size and gentle in demeanour. It was not surprising then that Siuluk, a very large man of considerable strength who lived quietly by himself, should be considered the last Tuniq by his Inuit neighbours. 

From Siuluk: The Last Tuniq by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Rob Nix

When several of the Inuit men taunt Siuluk about his size and strength, he knows they are being mean but he responds with a challenge for them to lift a sheet of rock.  Of course, none can lift the massive rock except Siuluk who lifts it with ease and leaves his legacy in a message he carves into the stone.

From Siuluk: The Last Tuniq by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Rob Nix

Though you can read about the Tuniit in Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley’s Tuniit: Mysterious Folk of the Arctic (Inhabit Media, 2015) and in How Things Came To Be: Inuit Stories of Creation (Inhabit Media, 2015),  Siuluk: The Last Tuniq takes a different perspective on the Tuniit.  Nadia Sammurtok tells a very simple story about teasing and differences in which a man finds a straightforward but elegant response to dismiss his intimidators.  So while children will learn about Siuluk and his status as the last Tuniq, they will also learn that anyone can be ill-treated by others and still  handle that treatment with self-possession and poise.  Siuluk, who is given graphic life by American illustrator Rob Nix, could have hurt the men who teased him about his size and strength but instead he demonstrated his brawn in a quiet but impactful manner, and even left a message for generations to come.

From Siuluk: The Last Tuniq by Nadia Sammurtok, illus. by Rob Nix

The best part of this story is revealed in Nadia Sammurtok’s afterword in which she reveals that her father had been told as a child a story about a man purported to be the last of the Tuniit who'd allegedly lived close to Chesterfield Inlet in Nunavut.  In fact, there’s a photo of her father, Tom Sammurtok, with Siuluk’s rock.  So it seems that Siuluk: The Last Tuniq, which is also available in Inuktitut, may be a traditional story about the last remaining Tuniq from the oldest community in Nunavut but it’s all the more special for the evidence of its veracity and the life lessons it encompasses.

The Caterpillar Woman

by Nadia Sammurtok

Illustrated by Carolyn Gan

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-083-9

32 pp.

Ages 7-10

2016

Piujuq was a beautiful woman who loved to dance with the butterflies by the lake. One day she meets a woman with glowing, green-tinged skin who introduces herself as Tarraq and admits she has become lost and separated from her camp.  Wearing only a thin jacket of strange material, Tarraq shivers with cold and asks Piujuq if they could trade coats, to which the kindly Piujuq agrees.  Soon after the stranger leaves, Piujuq realizes her hair has become spiny and her skin has transformed, becoming prickly and fuzzy and green. Not wanting to frighten her family, Piujuq wanders the land before secluding herself in an abandoned tent.

When three men, on a search for wives, come across her, she offers them tea and mends their ripped clothing.  Though she is saddened when they leave, knowing she was not beautiful enough to become one of their wives, one of the men, an older man named Amaruq, returns and declares that she is very kind and he would like to have her as his wife.  The two fall in love and make a good life together, each caring for the other.  When Piujuq asks him to make a drum so that she might once again dance with the butterflies, Amaruq finds an abandoned drumbeater that makes magical music, ultimately transforming both husband and wife.

From The Caterpillar Woman 

by Nadia Sammurtok

illus. by Carolyn Gan

Inuit writer Nadia Sammurtok has written The Caterpillar Woman as a traditional Inuit tale. The legend which has a moral or message about seeing beyond skin-deep beauty is steeped in Inuit traditions from parkas to drums but with the supernatural element of a caterpillar woman and a magical drumbeater. Though the transformation of Piujuq to a caterpillar woman may be somewhat frightening, and Australian artist Carolyn Gan does this creepiness very well, it is Piujuq’s kindness and the inner beauty both she and Amaraq see in each other that uplifts the story to one of magic.  It’s a story of redemption, though had Piujuq and Amaruq never been transfigured to beautiful and youthful, The Caterpillar Woman would still have had a happy ending and a lesson in seeing beyond superficial appearances.

From The Caterpillar Woman 

by Nadia Sammurtok 

illus. by Carolyn Gan