Nutshimit: In the Woods

Written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis

Illustrated by Elise Gravel

English text by Gaëlle Mollen

North Winds Press (Scholastic Canada)

978-1-0397-0180-9

88 pp.

Ages 6-8

August 2023 

 

Told in the first-person perspective of Melissa–author Melissa Mollen Dupuis–Nutshimit: In the Woods is an introduction to the natural world of the forest as seen through her Innu eyes. She relates how she experiences the forest, activating all her senses and thus taking a "forest bath."

 

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

Melissa teaches about the different types of forests based on the composition of trees, their ages and more, but also recognizes that forests are communities that include other species and elements like fungi, rocks and people. As such, the bulk of Nutshimit: In the Woods is an exploration of forest elements that are important to Innu culture. From the birch tree and its uses for baskets, canoes and biting art to the wolverine, called kuekuatsheu, a trickster important in Innu stories, Melissa Mollen Dupuis describes forest elements as they appear, as they relate to the Innu and what they mean for the environment. Young readers will learn about the sugar maple tree (upueiashkᵘ), lichen (uipatsheushkamikᵘ), the goose (nishk) and other birds and land and marine animals, as well as weather elements like winter (pipun) and snow (kun). Melissa Mollen Dupuis isn't just stating the facts that could be in any non-fiction book about forests; she's finding the heart of forest communities for what they are, what they offer and what we need to know to ensure their continuation.  At 88 pages, Nutshimit: In the Woods is beyond a picture book story and more of a reflective compendium that teaches, illustrates and entertains.

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

With procedurals for making maple syrup, braiding sweetgrass and cooking bannock, Melissa Mollen Dupuis also takes young readers from the forest and into an interactive learning experience, and goes beyond telling and into doing. That's her way of sharing her own experiences as an Innu child–now she is an Innu activist and CBC Radio host–and getting children to really see what she always did. 

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

Melissa Mollen Dupuis's ideas could have been a dry recounting of her cultural experiences with the forest, but they are not and, with the illustrations from Elise Gravel, there is a playfulness of characters and settings that shift the book from information to true storytelling. The forest becomes a character, not unlike Melissa herself, and Elise Gravel makes them all whimsical, from trees with eyes, a wolverine annoyed by humans, or a hibernating bear asking to not be bothered until spring. She keeps her cartoons mischievous while illuminating, and for a book loaded with cultural and personal significance, that is an achievement.

Take a walk in the woods with Melissa Mollen Dupuis and Elise Gravel and learn about those woods from an Innu perspective. It's revealing, it's heartfelt and it reminds all of us to open our senses to the natural world

From Nutshimit: In the Woods, written by Melissa Mollen Dupuis, illus. by Elise Gravel

🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳

A French-language edition, Nutshimit: Un bain de forêt will also be available in August.

 

The Walrus and the Caribou

Written by Maika Harper

Illustrated by Marcus Cutler

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-256-7

32 pp.

Ages 5-7

2019

This traditional Inuit origin story from actress Maika Harper and illustrator Marcus Cutler reminds us of the richness of the storytelling tradition, the source of Maika Harper's tale, and the breadth of its narration on revealing culture, history and people.

From The Walrus and the Caribou by Maika Harper, illus. by Marcus Cutler

When Guk was breathing life into the world, she pondered how the different parts of the animals should be organized. The walrus was generated when Guk blew air into her sealskin parka and added some flippers and wrinkles and antlers. (Yes, antlers.) The caribou was created from breathing life into her sealskin pants. With the addition of some big hooves and hair, a snout and tusks, her caribou was complete.

From The Walrus and the Caribou by Maika Harper, illus. by Marcus Cutler

But Guk's enhancements did not all work. The walrus's antlers were not a good idea. When the walrus swam, its massive antlers would upend the hunters' kayaks. As for the caribou, its tusks were not much appreciated by the hunters.

In a mix-and-match situation, Guk swaps out the tusks and the antlers, creating the familiar walrus and caribou of today's Arctic, with a special touch of punishment for the caribou because of its irritability and brashness.

From The Walrus and the Caribou by Maika Harper, illus. by Marcus Cutler

Though Maika Harper tells a simple tale of how the walrus and the caribou came to exist in their present morphologies, she also explains why the caribou avoids humans and encourages young readers to think about what animals they might create. With illustrator Marcus Cutler's Arctic landscape, depicted in a minimal palette of snowy whites, of earthy sandy browns and taupes, and of blue waters and skies, the walrus and caribou and Guk and the few hunters portrayed are the stars. They rule the landscape, living as they do, and sharing the land and water as tradition expected them to do so.

The Walrus and the Caribou may be a creation story with some tongue-in-cheek humour but it is also a representation of some Inuit traditions and culture, from the Inuit's clothing and hair to their kayaks and hunting techniques.  This tale will definitely inform and satisfy young readers, especially by answering, at least partially, that perennial question about where animals came from.

The Marrow Thieves

Written by Cherie Dimaline

Dancing Cat Books/Cormorant

978-1-77086-486-3

231 pp.

Ages 14+

2017

Poisoning your own drinking water, changing the air so much the earth shook and melted and crumbled, harvesting a race for medicine. (pg. 47)

This is the world in which Frenchie is trying to survive.  After his father had gone with the Council to the Southern Metropolitan City, hopeful of enacting some change, and their mom passed, it was just Frenchie and his older brother Mitch evading the Recruiters, truancy officers seeking Indigenous people to place in their new version of residential schools.  Seems that, though all were highly impacted by the stresses of water shortages, climatic shifts and conflict, non-Indigenous people lost the ability to dream and sought out Indigenous Peoples for their bone marrow as a source for that ability.  What actually happened in the schools, though, was the stuff of rumours and nightmares.

When Mitch sacrifices himself to the Recruiters to save Frenchie, the teen heads north and joins a  group headed by a man named Miigwans and the Elder Minerva, along with teens Chi-Boy and Wab, twelve-year-old twins Tree and Zheegwon, and a young boy Slopper and seven-year-old RiRi.  Along with a new arrival, Rose, the mixed group of Cree, Métis and more, from the east coast and the west lands and everywhere in between, work to stay safe, learn "old-timey" skills like hunting and homesteading but also language which has been lost.  Each comes with their own creation story, framing their lives with the scars of their histories and the jewels of their heritage.  How they will outrun their pasts and those who seek to harm them while making some future in a world gone terribly wrong can only be told by those telling the story and dreaming.

While the environmental degradation alone could result in the dystopia of The Marrow Thieves, it is but a fraction of the agony of the world Cherie Dimaline has created.  It is a world that has gone beyond decline and into catastrophic collapse.  The heinous racism against Aboriginal Peoples coupled with the carnage perpetrated against them is terrifying but not unfamiliar.  By telling this story in a dystopian world set decades into the future, Cherie Dimaline tells much more about the past.  Still, within that horror, there is a wisdom of self and others, a pocket of compassion and understanding that might be the only hope.

"...running only works of you're moving towards something, not away. Otherwise, you'll never get anywhere." (pg. 217)

Moreover, Cherie Dimaline tells it with such depth of feeling and imagery that The Marrow Thieves becomes a lyrical epic.

Out here stars were perforations revealing the bleached skeleton of the universe through a collection of tiny holes. And surrounded by these silent trees, beside a calming fire, I watched the bones dance.  This was our medicine, these bones, and I opened up and took it all in. And dreamed of north. (pg. 9)

The accolades for The Marrow Thieves have been robust and far-reaching.  They include winning the 2017 Governor General for Young People's Literature and the 2017 Kirkus Prize; a nomination for the Forest of Reading's White Pine Award; selection as The Globe and Mail Best Book; and most recently selection for CBC's 2018 Canada Reads battle of the books. The Marrow Thieves deserves each honour and more as does its creator Cherie Dimaline for weaving a cautionary story of sorrow and history with a future that still has a sliver of reverie.

How Things Came To Be: Inuit Stories of Creation

by Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley

Illustrated by Emily Fiegenschuh and Patricia Ann Lewis-MacDougall

Inhabit Media

978-1-927095-78-2

80 pp.

Ages 5-11

2015

It may be the end of Aborginal Heritage Month (June) and the end of the school year, but How Things Came To Be: Inuit Stories of Creation will need to be on any booklist that focuses on the Inuit culture or myths and legends.  The unstoppable team of Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, whose collaborations include Lesson for the Wolf (Inhabit Media, 2015) and Tuniit: Mysterious Folk of the Arctic (Inhabit Media, 2015) and who won the 2015 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature, share nine classic creation stories based on the Inuit’s love and respect of the Land, the Sea and the Sky.

In their comprehensive introduction, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley familiarize young readers with the Inuit concepts of Nuna (the Land) and Sila (Grand Sky or Big Everything), as well as ideas of life and breath, riddles and dreams, and beginnings and endings. It’s a perfect opening for the stories When Things Came to Be; The Land’s Babies; The Battle of Day and Night; How the Caribou Came to Be; How the Sun and Moon Arose; Feathers and Ice; The Deep Mother; The Storm Orphans; and The One Who is Tied.

In the beginning, will was all that drove creation. What is will, but the dream of someone who is awake? (pg. 13)

When Things Came to Be is an all-inclusive beginning of the origins of the earth, flowers, humans and dogs, light and dark, and more, until forgetfulness about people's origins led to the diminishment of their Strength.  But the stories that follow are a record of “a few deeds of those times.  The tantrums.  The strangeness. The foolishness.  And the wonder.” (pg. 18)

The Land’s Babies tells of the time when babies were born of the Land and women had only to search for them, nearby for girls and farther out for baby boys. As such, the Land was everyone’s ancestor.  Light and darkness born out of conflict between the Fox and the Raven is the focus of The Battle of Day and Night.  While the emphases of the origin stories How Caribou Came to Be and How the Sun and Moon Arose are obvious, Feather and Ice is less so, though still deeply rooted in explaining how an infuriated shaman wields her ulu (a crescent-shaped knife) to create icebergs and waterfowl from the Sea in which her husband flees from her.

From How Things Came To Be: Inuit Stories of Creation 

by Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, 

illus. by Emily Fiegenschuh and Patricia Ann Lewis-MacDougall

Cruelty and weakness are the themes of the final stories in this collection.  Frightening elements of a spirit enslaving a young woman and of her father sacrificing her to the Sea permeate The Deep Mother, an origin story of the first seals and walruses and other ocean mammals, as well as the  torrential wrath the Sea can display.  The Storm Orphans spotlights two children whose suffering at the hands of the people of the Weak Sky transform them into Thunder and Lightning. Finally, in The One Who is Tied, the murder of a selfish giant and his wife, and the cruelty towards their orphaned baby creates the spirit Silaup Inua, the furious storm winds.

Completing the collection, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley append the stories with a discussion About Endings, and provide a Glossary of Inuktitut Terms, both useful in framing and for clarification.  But the ultimate finishing touch to How Things Came To Be is the artwork by illustrators Emily Fiegenschuh and Patricia Ann Lewis-MacDougall who meld the serene Arctic worlds of land and sea with both realistic and supernatural elements and model the Big Everything so vividly. How Things Came To Be is a complete package of story-telling and art for giving voice to classic Inuit creation stories and meaningful discussions of beginnings and endings.