THE BOY WHO LIVED WITH THE SEALS
Illustrated by David Shannon
G. P. Putnam
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This companion to the critically acclaimed The Rough-Face Girl presents a mysterious Native American (Wasco-Chinook) tale of a boy who must follow his own path and find his own way. In so doing, gifts come that benefit the whole community.
“In the heroic style of Martin and Shannon’s The Rough-Face Girl (1992), a fairly elaborate expansion of ’a very short story told by the Chinook people of the Northwest Coast.’ A little boy playing by the water disappears; his grieving parents don’t see him again until, years later, after a woman from another tribe espies him among the seals. Captured, the seal-like boy reluctantly tries to adapt, meanwhile learning to carve exquisitely decorated canoes. Then he escapes once again to the seals; but each year his parents find, as a gift, a beautiful new canoe. Martin’s extended text has the yearning, bittersweet tone of tales like the selkie stories, where a character is torn between two worlds. In Shannon’s carefully composed paintings, the nobly dignified ’People’ are set against backgrounds celebrating the austere beauty of forest and sea. A handsome setting for a satisfyingly dramatic tale.”
“Based on a tale related by the Chinook people of the Northwest Coast, this is a moving account of a young boy who disappears one day while his tribe camps near the great River during their spring migration. Despite the tribe’s frantic efforts to locate him, his whereabouts remain a mystery. After the boy reappears among the seals, he is captured and brought back to his home, where he must relearn all that he had once known. A masterful retelling.” —The Horn Book