The Wolf-Birds

by Willow Dawson

Owlkids Books

978-1-77147-054-4

40 pp.

Ages 5-8

2015

Sometimes I receive review copies of books that get office-bushwhacked on their way to reviews on CanLit for LittleCanadians.  Sometimes I get back to them, and sometimes I don’t.  And then sometimes because of award nominations I feel compelled to finally get that review out.  Such is the case with Willow Dawson’s The Wolf-Birds, recently nominated for the 2016 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the 2016 Information Book Award and the 2017 Blue Spruce Award.  Mea culpa for not reviewing The Wolf-Birds sooner.

The Wolf-Birds is a story of survival in the natural world and it’s not an easy one.  But when life is governed by the weather and food availability, how can it be anything but perilous?  Two hungry ravens endure the cold of winter, scavenging for food wherever possible.  When they hear four wolves in pursuit of a buffalo, they follow, expectant of some scraps.  Instead, one of the wolves is killed and the three remaining wolves continue their own search for food, alerted by the ravens to a starving and injured deer.  

From The Wolf-Birds by Willow Dawson

In the wild winter wood…

…one animal’s life helps many others live.  

From strongest to smallest,

everyone feasts in turn, filling

bellies and beaks. (pg. 24-27)

The interdependent relationship between the ravens and wolves is recognized by the common use of the term “wolf-birds” for ravens, acknowledging the unique connection between the two creatures.  As Willow Dawson’s story reveals, ravens are prepared to steal food killed by wolves as well as lead them by call and display to potential prey, while wolves pay attention to where ravens congregate and willingly clean up that which the birds do not eat.  It’s a unique interdependence and one that affords greater discussion in science classrooms, discussions aptly supported by the book’s references and information guide available at the Owlkids website here.

But, The Wolf-Birds is an illustrated children’s book and one whose artwork must be recognized as fundamental in the telling of its story.  The text is spare and that is because the illustrations, acrylic paint on board, propel the story through the cycles of food and life. Eerily reminiscent of the sleek animals of cave dwellings, Willow Dawson’s fauna are simple, outlined creatures, unadorned but easily identifiable, coloured in muted earth tones of feathers and fur, alongside cool snow and winter skies, with occasional brightness of rose or green.

From The Wolf-Birds by Willow Dawson

There is a story to tell here of life in the wild and a mutualistic relationship of which many readers are unaware.  The Wolf-Birds, beautifully depicted by Willow Dawson's artwork, is a story that must be told and appreciated for its lessons and its message about working together and survival, teachings that go far beyond the natural environment portrayed within.

Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush

by Patrick Crowe and Carol Shields

Illustrated by Selena Goulding

Introduction by Margaret Atwood

Adapted by Willow Dawson

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-003-2

152 pp.

Ages 13-18

April 2016

As Margaret Atwood so expressively writes in her introduction to this graphic novel of pioneer Susanna Moodie’s story,

This graphic version does justice to the many facets of her tale. It will introduce a new generation of readers to a figure who remains both iconic and – despite the attention lavished upon her over the past forty-five years – mysterious. (pg. x)

As the youngest of six Strickland sisters, Susanna, born 1803, had a auspicious heritage as part of a family renowed for their literary achievements though the lack of a dowry compelled her to pursue her ambitions voraciously, much to her sisters’ dismay.  While campaigning against slavery, Susanna makes the acquaintance of Captain Moodie and becomes the first of her siblings to marry.  In 1832, she and her husband and their first child, along with one servant, Hannah, set out for the new world, Canada.

Marrying for love, not money, carried the ominous sentence of emigration, but I had devised a plan.  This exile would be made less terrible, knowing that all four of us would make a new home together across the sea, in Canada – the new landmark for the rich in hope and poor in purse. (pg. 10)

From their stay of quarantine at Grosse Isle, Quebec, Susanna begins to see the natural beauty of the country, though she is chagrined at the “shameless antics of newly arrived Europeans” (pg. 17), giving her first of honest impressions. And though the promise of a new home is tarnished by the hardships they must endure and to which they bear witness, like racial and religious prejudice, and Yankee squatters, Susanna is still charmed by much in the new land, from the lakes and forests she puts to paint in her art, to the new friendships she makes.  Still , when her sister Catherine  arrives with her new husband, Thomas Parr Traill, she admits that “I think that we’ve made a grievous error in coming to this country.” (pg. 41)

But Susanna is all the more exasperated when, after several more years of hard labour and hunger, she learns that her sister has written a book called The Backwoods of Canada: Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, making “this wretched wilderness into a fool’s paradise.” (pg. 69) Still, it isn’t until the war breaks out in 1837 and her husband John must join the militia that Susanna again takes ink to paper to earn much needed funds.  And all her experiences, simple joys and horrific discoveries, life-threatening illnesses and heart-breaking tragedies, became the writing that is her iconic Roughing It in the Bush, published in 1852, after the Moodies had left the bush for a posting in Belleville.

As authors Patrick Crowe, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood and Willow  Dawson can attest, Susanna Moodie’s writing has both been lauded and lambasted, for its raw honesty about the hardships of pioneers to settle in the new world. By sharing the details of her life, both before the book's publication and afterward, with realistic graphics by Selena Goulding that tell more of the story than the words might allow for a youthful audience, Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush is a brilliant story of fortitude and resolution that exposes the scars and charms of a life lived and a country born.

Page 64 from Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush 

by Patrick Crowe and Carol Shields, 

Adapted by Willow Dawson, 

Illustrated by Selena Goulding