The Golden Apples

Written by Dan Yashinsky

Illustrated by Ekaterina Khlebnikova

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

978-1-998802050

40 pp.

Ages 6-9

September 2023

 

It all starts with golden apples. And it ends with golden apples. But the story in between is big, far greater than a few golden apples coveted by a king. The real story of The Golden Apples is Jack's story of quests, and it is this story that must be told aloud by a storyteller, such as Dan Yashinsky or the reader, and heard by all children, young and old.

From The Golden Apples, by Dan Yashinsky, illus. by Ekaterina Khlebnikova

Once upon a time–imagine a true storyteller like Dan Yashinsky saying this with an evocative, spirited voice– there was a king, a queen, and their three sons. When golden apples appear on a tree in their garden, and they disappear before the king can enjoy them, he sends his sons out, one at a time, to locate the golden-feathered bird which Jack, the youngest, had witnessed taking them. Both older boys succumb to temptations along the way, but Jack heeds the advice of a benevolent fox and discovers the bird. Unfortunately, Jack too is foolish in that he disregards some directives and lands himself in trouble. Still, he is offered opportunities to get himself out of trouble by undertaking yet another task.

From The Golden Apples, by Dan Yashinsky, illus. by Ekaterina Khlebnikova

Unfortunately, each task requires him to steal something. And each time, he ignores a piece of advice from the fox who tries to help him be successful. From the golden bird to a golden-maned horse, and a princess with beautiful eyes, Jack verges on getting things right until he doesn't. Still, this is Jack, the "hero" of many tales of folklore, so it all works out in the end, even if with a few twists along the way.

 

Dan Yashinsky, founder of the Toronto Storytelling Festival, knows how to tell a story. Whether it is in person or in written form, Dan Yashinsky keeps listeners and readers captivated, waiting for the next scene, the next conflict, the next laugh. He makes us want to find out what happens next, without padding his stories with filler to draw them out. Readers will quickly realize that Jack is the son often disregarded and the one who, with a little help and some cleverness, is able to surpass the minimal expectations others have of him. This may be familiar to some children who feel undervalued in families or in the classroom, but it offers them hope that they can achieve with perseverance. Still Dan Yashinsky makes Jack real with his ineptitude–come on, Jack, listen to the fox!–and unintentional fumbles but with a good heart. (In the end, he does something very difficult and heart-breaking that comes to a good end.)

From The Golden Apples, by Dan Yashinsky, illus. by Ekaterina Khlebnikova

I think Christmas is a great time for storytelling, as families gather around, perhaps in the aftermath of a big meal or as children are settling down before sleep. And The Golden Apples, told as Dan Yashinsky wrote it, with heart and verve, will bring everyone together. With the added dimension of Russian artist Ekaterina Khlebnikova's illustrations, a blend of different media that add depth and whimsy–like Nirvana and Metallica posters on the princess's walls, or Jack's headphones-wearing brother–The Golden Apples also has colour, humour, and texture. The Golden Apples may not be a Christmas story, but it would be a fine story to tell this holiday season or anytime a great tale is called for.

When Pumpkins Fly

Written by Margaret Lawrence

Illustrated by Amanda Sandland and Margaret Lawrence

Inhabit Media

978-1-77227-249-9

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

September 2020

 

Though Halloween will be a very different holiday for many children this year, author Margaret Lawrence demonstrates for young readers how different it must always be in her territory of Nunavut when getting a pumpkin into the community is a very big thing.

From When Pumpkins Fly by Margaret Lawrence, illus. by Amanda Sandland and Margaret Lawrence

As always in remote communities like Margaret Lawrence's home of Sanikiluaq on Flaherty Island in Hudson's Bay, cargo flights play an important role in delivering much needed provisions. Getting a pumpkin is not as easy as heading to a field of thousands and picking out one.  When the pumpkins arrive and one becomes part of each class's celebrations, which includes carving and eating, a draw is held to select the lucky student from each who gets to take the carved pumpkin home.

As with all children who go out trick or treating, the children of the community dress up in the costumes but also in heavy coats and mittens and carry flashlights to ward off the darkness. But it's after the trick-or-treating and the community hall dance is over that young minds go to the dark places of the night.

From When Pumpkins Fly by Margaret Lawrence, illus. by Amanda Sandland and Margaret Lawrence

As I drift off, I think about the tunnaat who live out on the land. Halloween is a night to think about these ancient and wise beings that like to visit our community.

As the wind blows and temperatures drop, the child wonders about the pumpkin on the steps outside which may be appropriated by a fox or ravens but also perhaps tunnaat.

From When Pumpkins Fly by Margaret Lawrence, illus. by Amanda Sandland and Margaret Lawrence

The cargo planes may bring the pumpkins to Margaret Lawrence's home but When Pumpkins Fly brings all young readers to this Inuit community to experience a Halloween that is a little bit different. Though illustrator Amanda Sandland may live in the Toronto area, her artwork, with contributions from Margaret Lawrence, takes us to that cold climate for this annual holiday, ensuring authenticity of location with her landscapes and people. 

At its heart, Halloween is still an event of pumpkins and trick-or-treating for the children of Sanikiluaq and When Pumpkins Fly depicts it as such. But it is also a one-of-a-kind occasion for a community that enjoys the popular aspects of the holiday along with their own traditions. By allowing Inuit children the opportunity to see themselves and for non-Inuit children to learn about cultures other than their own, When Pumpkins Fly takes us all out on Halloween.

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

When Pumpkins Fly is also available in Inuktitut from publisher Inhabit Media.

Footsteps in Bay de Verde: A mysterious tale

Written by Charis Cotter

Illustrated by Jenny Dwyer

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

978-1-927917282

44 pp.

All ages

May 2020

From the extraordinary teller of ghost stories, Charis Cotter, comes another haunting tale of old Newfoundland from a time when listening to adults talk was entertainment for children and mysterious tales weren't from the imagination alone.

From Footsteps in Bay de Verde: A mysterious tale by Charis Cotter, illus. by Jenny Dwyer

An hour past their bedtime, children John, Bridie and Theresa–8, 6 and 4 respectively–sit squished on a daybed with others, trying to stay invisible to the adults who visited, sharing news of the fishing, the union, and the weather. They also speak of the health of Mother's cousin, Jim Keye, ever known as Poor Keye, who'd gone to hospital in St. John's. Poor Keye who was already afflicted with cataracts and a bad leg that gave him a recognizable "step–shuffle–thump" footstep was a favourite of Birdie's for his jokes and candy in his pockets.

From Footsteps in Bay de Verde: A mysterious tale by Charis Cotter, illus. by Jenny Dwyer

Just as Mr. Fleming begins his story about Billy Cotter going stark raving made one night, "screaming bloody and foaming around the mouth," the front door crashes open with a bang and they all hear the familiar shambling footsteps coming down the hall. As they wait for the returned Poor Keye, Mr. Fleming continues his story. They all hear the footsteps but no one comes in. Bridie's mother even takes the lamp and goes to check on him, sure that he'd lost his way because of his cataracts.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to fill the whole house. Bridie could feel her heart thumping under her sweater. The wind was picking up now, rattling the windows furiously.
     Suddenly there was a loud crash from the back kitchen, and the sound of breaking glass.

When their mother returns without Jim and sees her children still up at quarter past nine, she shuffles them off to bed, leaving a candle for the three children who huddle in their bed in darkness of their room.

From Footsteps in Bay de Verde: A mysterious tale by Charis Cotter, illus. by Jenny Dwyer

But it's in the brightness of the next morning that brings the scariest of news when a telegram arrives from St. John's that confirms that last night's visit was not limited to those seen in the kitchen.

Charis Cotter is a ghost storyteller. From her award-winning The Swallow to her The Ferryland Visitor, Charis Cotter, who lives by the sea in Western Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, paints wildly spooky stories from the mundane. It’s the wind and the rain and a road or a picture. It's friends gathering to chat and a soul far away and right at hand. She tells it as it was, placing the reader in a house pounded by a wind, chilled and dark by weather and something else. From little Theresa whimpering to Mr. Brady spitting out his chewing tobacco to the wind trying to get in, Footsteps in Bay de Verde recreates a story told to Charis Cotter by Brian Walsh, a Newfoundland storyteller himself, of a story his mother experienced in the 1920s and makes us believe what the characters saw and heard.

"It could've been the wind."
"Well, if it was, it's the first time I've ever heard the wind make footsteps."

This is Newfoundlander Jenny Dwyer's first picture book and she gives powerful imagery to Charis Cotter's words. That wind, the cold, the dark and the haunting atmosphere of Bridie's family home on that night is delivered with a starkness and an authority. Through her limited palette of cool blues, greys and black, with just the mere touch of red–in a ribbon, on a candy, a stamp on a telegram–Jenny Dwyer upholds the eeriness of the night and the revelation of the next morning. Even on this hot summer day as I review this story, I feel that chill and the mysteriousness of something experienced but unexplained.

For another haunting picture book, set in old Newfoundland, Footsteps in Bay de Verde makes the real just a little bit dark and a whole lot mysterious.

Spirited Away: Fairy Stories of Old Newfoundland

Written by Tom Dawe

Illustrated by Veselina Tomova

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides Inc.

978-1-927917-13-8

60 pp.

Ages 9+

October 2017

If the cover of Spirited Away leaves you with a feeling of dark and foreboding forces at play, then artist Veselina Tomova has done her job admirably because the stories that Tom Dawe recounts from family members and others about the nefarious fairies of old Newfoundland are truly spooky and frightening, if they are to be believed.  Tom Dawe and those who tell and listen believe, and so do I.

From Spirited Away 

by Tom Dawe

 illus. by Veselina Tomova

Nine stories, addended with a glossary and notes about each story's derivation, recall stories of children, a war bride, a visiting nurse, grandmothers and more as they were touched by fairies or were witness to such encounters.  In the first story In a Place Like This, a girl recalls an abandoned house near a pool where her grandfather gathered eels.  She'd heard the warnings of it being a place of spirits and evil fairies and the tales of a man in green dancing upon the house's door ledge.  But her story relates to evil done to the baby sister she watched over as her family cut hay in the adjacent fields.  Only the baby and a green butterfly know how her arm was broken as she lay on a blanket.

Paddy the Hermit, called the Music Man, often told scary stories but they became reality when walking home he is encircled by a group of little fairies who put a spell on him to play his harmonica until he collapses.

From Spirited Away 

by Tom Dawe

 illus. by Veselina Tomova

In several stories, people seek shelter inside at night when fairies seek to harm them outside.  In The Marsh, floating lights, said to portend death, follow two young men on their return from a dance.  Only shelter in a church all night with the light hoovering outside kept the men safe. Where Water Ran the Other Way tells of trapper Solomon finds refuge in a small cabin when caught at dusk.  Though feeling compelled to open the door to those calling him, he wills himself not to listen or look out the windows at the strange goings-on.

There's the story of The Fairy Funeral, Bones and Fallen Angels (from which the cover illustration is derived)  but the other two most compelling stories for me were Spirited Away and The Changeling.  In Spirited Away, a grandmother disappears from a family outing of blueberry-picking.  She recalls being lured deep into the forest by drumming and hours later being found but without memory of her extraordinary walk including the crossing of major rivers. The Changeling is perhaps the most disturbing.  It is the story of a visiting nurse called in the night to the home where less than two months earlier little Gracie was born.  Fearing the only child of John and Sally was ill, she discovers a mother declaring that there was something in the crib but not her child.

Finally, I found the courage to approach the crib. I pulled back the sheet.  And then, God protect us all! I'll never forget the sight. (pg. 46)

It's a chilling story of fairies taking babies and leaving something in its place but it's the certainty of what that nurse saw that was the most compelling.

I know what I saw.  And I know what happened.  John and Sally lost their only child. And that night in an outport years ago, I witnessed an evil transformation.  Something ugly and strange was left in the cot where Gracie was supposed to be. (pg. 49)

Tom Dawe tells some disturbing stories in Spirited Away, enhancing the atmosphere with the flavour of Newfoundland and coastal Labrador.  From the music to blueberry picking and the vocabulary much unknown to me (you may not need to look up duckish, emper, fetch, livyers and herts but I did), these are the stories of the people of Newfoundland.  Veselina Tomova's woodcut illustrations, in dark tones and snatches of light, reflect the very settings in which the fairies appear.  These are not your Disney fairies.  These are frightening, and Tom Dawe ensures that we know that they are real.

From Spirited Away 

by Tom Dawe 

illus. by Veselina Tomova

Stories of the Aurora

by Joan Marie Galat

Illustrated by Lorna Bennett

Whitecap Books

978-1-77050-210-9

68 pp.

Ages 9-13

November 2016

The magic light show that is the aurora–aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere and aurora australis in the southern hemisphere–has delighted, terrified and perplexed cultures through the world for centuries.  In Stories of the Aurora, her fifth book in the astronomical non-fiction series Dot to Dot in the Sky, Joan Marie Galat provides both the science behind the phenomena and the stories of ancient cultures told to explain them.

In addition to her discussion of plasma, magnetic fields, solar winds and the ionosphere, Joan Marie Galat shares with readers where and when to look for auroras, and how to find them.  But, it’s Joan Marie Galat’s examination of the different links of the aurora stories to the spirit world, including as omens, dancing spirits or fires, and the six stories from various northern cultures that bring a new perspective to a well-explained sky phenomenon.

The Inuit believed that the aurora was associated with the spirits of the dead, perhaps playing a kicking game, and a representation of a level of heaven.  The Norse have a story, here titled Skirnir’s Journey, in which Frey marries the frost giant maiden Gerda and it is their union that brings the lights dancing above the earth. Another Norse legend has the lights produced by the armour and shields of the Valkyries as they race across the sky to do Odin’s bidding.  The Greeks believed that the glowing lights were as a result of the goddess of the dawn, Eos.  The Wabanaki/Algonquin legend The Rainbow Belt relates how a chief follows his often-absent son and enters the Land of the Northern Lights where his son and others don bands around the heads and their waists that shine and stream wild lights as they play a ball game.  Finally, in Land of Eternal Memory, the Mi’kmaq and French-Canadians tell of a young man touched by magic and his beloved fairy wife, saddened by a separation, who are taken to a place where no one forgets those for whom they care.  There they are transformed into the aurora, shaking when they look down upon the Land of Forgetfulness, dancing with the joy of their togetherness. 

Stories of the Aurora is an interesting take on a non-fiction topic, providing both the science and the fiction of the aurora.  While I might have modified the organization of the text and filtered the stories to emphasize the origin tales of the aurora, the book balances the two aspects equitably and provides plenty of information for discussion of the subject.  

If you're in Edmonton this weekend, do go to the book launch for Stories of the Aurora at Telus World of Science.  There's lots going on, including a rocket launch! Details here including where to register for this free event.

Stories of the Aurora: Book launch (Edmonton, AB)

Here's a book launch like no other!

Author Joan Marie Galat 

will be launching her fifth and newest title 

in her Dot to Dot in the Sky series

Stories of the Aurora

by Joan Marie Galat

Illustrated by Lorna Bennett

Whitecap Books

978-1-77050-210-9

68 pp.

Ages 9-13

November 2016

on Saturday, December 3, 2016

1:30 p.m.

at Telus World of Science

11211-142 St. NW

Edmonton, AB

In addition to a reading, book signing, entertainment, activities,  
refreshments and door prizes, there will be a rocket launch!

The book, Stories of the Aurora, explains why the northern lights occur; features folklore from the Inuit, Norse, Romans, Mi’kmaq, Wabanaki, and other peoples; and includes back cover comments from a Canadian astronaut, NASA scientist, and CBC's Bob McDonald.

The event is free 

but register at

  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/book-launch-dot-to-dot-in-the-sky-stories-of-the-aurora-tickets-28261098707

The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel

by Drew Hayden Taylor
Art by Michael Wyatt
Graphic adaptation by Alison Kooistra
Annick Press
978-1-55451-572-1
108 pp.
Ages 12+
September, 2013

Drew Hayden Taylor's original Native gothic novel The Night Wanderer (Annick, 2007) has found its graphic texture in this upcoming release, The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel, illustrated in black and white by Michael Wyatt and adapted by Alison Kooistra.

In the story, Tiffany Hunter lives on the Anishnabe First Nations reserve at Otter Lake with her dad and grandmother, and feels like she has more than her share of angst.  Her non-Native boyfriend Tony may take her to drinking parties but never wants to really be seen with her.  Her friends, Darla and Kim, are feeling ostracized by her and reciprocate.  Her mother left and has moved to Edmonton with her white boyfriend, which clouds most of her dad's interactions with anger, including when he discovers her disastrous report card.  And now they've taken on a boarder, Pierre L'Errant, who claims his great-grandfather came from Otter Lake.

"Dad, I'm sick of all this garbage.  I'm just sixteen years old and I've got another seventy years of misery ahead of me.  And right now, the only thing I'm sure of is I can't take it." (pg. 68)

It is Pierre L'Errant, their mysterious boarder, who finds Tiffany and shares some truths about himself to help encourage her self-respect.

While I suspect that this graphic version of Drew Hayden Taylor's story may lack the literary punch of its original form (not surprising when text must be culled), The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel still produces the eerie atmosphere of the supernatural enmeshed in the harsh reality of many First Nations' people.  Even without the appearance of Pierre L'Errant (l'errant is French for "the wanderer"), Tiffany's life is a mash up of unfulfilled wishes, loss and confusion.  But, because his reminiscences and secretive actions on the reserve bring into question his true nature, Pierre's involvement with the young Tiffany adds the darker supernatural elements, leaving the reader wondering whether the story will turn out horribly or favourably for her.  Michael Wyatt's sharp-edged illustrations, only black and white with occasional splotches of blood red, complement the text appropriately, definitely prompting trepidation (though his final image surprisingly produced a calm in this reader).  While I would have liked to see how Drew Hayden Taylor would have adapted his own text for this graphic novel of The Night Wanderer, both Alison Kooistra and Michael Wyatt can be commended for bringing this gothic tale to a new audience of young readers, melding the vampire phenomenon with a First Nations' legend.