Margery Bernstein

Prompted by his young son's distress at the continued cold, Ojeeg the fisher sets out - together with his friends Otter, Beaver, Lynx and Wolverine - to find Summer, and bring it to the world. Climbing the high mountains, the companions come to the home of a powerful spirit known as a manitou, who advises them on their quest, pointing them to the mountaintop where they can break into the land above the sky. It is here that they find the birds of Summer, and set them free. But everything has its price, and Ojeeg finds himself stranded in the sky, far from home...

Co-workers and co-authors Margery Bernstein and Janet Kobrin - two primary school teachers who collaborated on a number of folktale retellings, including How the Sun Made a Promise and Kept It and The First Morning: An African Myth - turn their attention here to the Ojibwe tradition. The narrative of The Summer Maker flows well, being simple enough for younger children, but engaging enough for older. I did find myself (as I so often do) wishing for some sort of attribution, or mention of source, on the authors' part.

Anne Burgess' black and white illustrations are delightful - the snow-encrusted lynx is particularly amusing - with wonderfully expressive faces on all the animals. It's a rather odd choice, on Burgess' part, putting a bookcase full of the works of western literature (Pliny, Homer, Ovid) in the home of a manitou, but if you can look past that, her artwork is charming.… (altro)

When the creator god Weese-ke-jak - who made the earth and sky, and all the creatures of the world - attempts to harness the sun, thereby preventing it from wandering away, and leaving his creation in cold darkness, he soon realizes his mistake. With the fiery globe rotating the earth so closely, the heat quickly becomes unbearable, scorching the land, and endangering all of life. It falls to brave Beaver - at great personal cost to himself - to gnaw through the net, and release the sun...

Margery Bernstein and Janet Kobrin, two primary school teachers who worked together at the University of Chicago Laboratory School in the 1970s, collaborated on a number of folktale retellings intended for young readers, How the Sun Made a Promise and Kept It among them. With a simple but engaging text suitable for younger children, and bold line drawings (done on orange paper) from Ed Heffernan, this is a picture-book with both visual and narrative appeal.

I do find the authors' description of this as a tale from the "Bungee" Indians, more than a little confusing. The note lists it as a "Bungee (Chippewa)" tale, which is probably not surprising, since "Bungee" seems to have been one of many incorrect names given to the Ojibwe, over the years. There is also a dialect of English known as Bungee, which is a mixture of Scots English, Cree, Obijwe, and Scots Gaelic.

But Bernstein and Kobrin specify that "their" Bungee Indians are also known as the Swampy Indians, of Lake Winnipeg. I believe that the Swampy Indians, however, are Cree, not Ojibwe. Given the fact that this very same tale, appearing under the title How Beaver Got His Fine Fur, is explicitly listed in Natalia Belting's The Long-Tailed Bear and Other Indian Legends as Cree, I'm going to assume that this retelling too, comes from the Cree tradition, and not the Ojibwe.

Given that confusion, concerning the correct cultural attribution of this tale, I found myself wishing that specific information, as to source-material, had been provided by the authors. I suspect they were using some outdated ethnographic report...… (altro)

Having always lived in a world of perpetual darkness, Mouse, Spider and Fly are the first to volunteer, when Lion calls for someone to travel to the land above the sky, and bring back light for the world. Climbing up a web of spider's construction, the three companions confront the king of this land, who - not wanting to share the light - sets them three seemingly impossible tasks, and, when these are accomplished, still attempts to trick them...

This tale from the Sukuma people of Tanzania - the third such folkloric retelling I have read from Bernstein and Kobrin, following upon How the Sun Made a Promise and Kept It, and The Summer Maker - explains how the first morning came to be. Like the classic tale type in which fire is won from the gods, this is a story in which light is won for the earth, and is well-told. Enid Warner Romanek's black and white illustrations are simple and bold, with some folk art appeal to them. I know very little about the Sukuma, but I found myself wondering whether her depiction of the King (as seen on the front cover), was at all based on their aesthetic traditions.… (altro)