A mix of 32 timeless chillers and personal encounters with the supernatural gathered from Native American storytellers and traditions.
Carefully acknowledging his oral, online, and print sources (and appending lists of additional ones), Jones (Ponca) intersperses his own anecdotes and retellings with accounts by others collected in his travels. The generally brief entries are gathered into types, from brushes with ghosts or spirits (the latter distinguished by having “more complex agendas” than the former) to witches and monsters. In them, the tone ranges from mild eeriness—hearing an elder relative on the porch just moments after she died and seeing small footprints appear in wet concrete near the burial ground of an abandoned Oklahoma boarding school—to terrifying glimpses of were-owls, were-otters, a malign walking doll, and a giant water serpent with a “sinister smile.” They all join the more familiar (in children’s books, anyway) likes of Bigfoot and La Llorona. Linked to a broad diversity of traditions spanning the North American continent, the stories, both old—there’s one ascribed to the ancient Mississippian culture—and those given recent, even modern settings, are related in matter-of-fact language that underscores a common sense of how close the natural and supernatural worlds are. In sometimes-intricate ink drawings, Alvitre (Tongva) amps the creepiness by alternating depictions of everyday items with grinning skulls, heaps of bones, and the odd floating head.
Valuable both for its broad range and shivery appeal. (introductory notes) (Traditional literature. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-68160-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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PERSPECTIVES
Find something to do in every state in the U.S.A.!
This guide highlights a location of interest within each of the states, therefore excluding Washington, D.C., and the territories. Trivia about each location is scattered across crisply rendered landscapes that background each state’s double-page spread while diminutive, diverse characters populate the scenes. Befitting the title, one “adventure” is presented per state, such as shrimping in Louisiana’s bayous, snowshoeing in Connecticut, or celebrating the Fourth of July in Boston. While some are stereotypical gimmes (surfing in California), others have the virtue of novelty, at least for this audience, such as viewing the sandhill crane migration in Nebraska. Within this thematic unity, some details go astray, and readers may find themselves searching in vain for animals mentioned. The trivia is plentiful but may be misleading, vague, or incorrect. Information about the Native American peoples of the area is often included, but its brevity—especially regarding sacred locations—means readers are floundering without sufficient context. The same is true for many of the facts that relate directly to expansion and colonialism, such as the unexplained near extinction of bison. Describing the genealogical oral history of South Carolina’s Gullah community as “spin[ning] tales” is equally brusque and offensive. The book tries to do a lot, but it is more style than substance, which may leave readers bored, confused, slightly annoyed—or all three. (This book was reviewed digitally with 12.2-by-20.2-inch double-page spreads viewed at 80% of actual size.)
Go adventuring with a better guide. (tips on local adventuring, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-5445-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES
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BOOK REVIEW
Supernatural talk and tales from a Newfoundland poet and lifelong resident.
Being more “talk” than “tales,” the nine episodes are mostly reminiscences in which narrators of both sexes recall hearing about the encounters of others with eldritch folk in spooky settings, including a headless ghost, a changeling in their baby’s crib, flickering “corpse candles” in a graveyard, or in some cases just scary spots in the woods. Though Dawe supplies source notes with further anecdotes, it’s not clear whether he’s actually recording stories he heard or spinning fragmentary memories and standard folkloric motifs into fictive creations. In either case, despite atmospheric language and Tomova’s dark and eerie linocut illustrations, readers are likely to feel distanced by the second- (or third-) hand narratives. Nor, though the author often refers to real locales, is there much beyond a vaguely Celtic air to give the tales a flavorsome sense of specific place or culture. There is no sign of racial or ethnic diversity in either pictures or text.
A few mild chills but bland and generic fare overall. (glossary) (Folkloric short stories. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-927917-13-8
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Running the Goat
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S PARANORMAL & SUPERNATURAL
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