Picture Book Reviews from Inhabit Media

It was my niece's third birthday recently and I wanted to get her something special.  My sister told me that she was really getting into longer more involved stories like The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman.  She also really enjoys A Promise Is A Promise by Robert Munsch.  I wanted to get her something that I didn't think she would get from anyone else.  I found out about this Canadian publishing company based in Iqaluit while at the OLA Super Conference.  I saw the vendor booth on the trade show, but Akilak's Adventure was also mentioned at the talk about Diverse Books.

I went to Chapters and it was kind of a pain to find these books since they are filed in different sections of 3 - 5 year old storytime books, but I persevered and the results were totally worth it!  Although I was tempted to get The Owl and the Lemming, I didn't think my niece would like that one as much.  The books that I eventually chose were The Caterpillar Woman and Akilak's Adventure.

This is a really interesting story about a girl who gives her jacket to a strange woman and takes on the appearance of a caterpillar.  When hunters come to her tent, she helps them and one of them takes her as his wife.  Eventually, she becomes her beautiful self again and her husband becomes young and handsome in this fairy tale ending.  There are a lot of words that are a little difficult to pronounce, but there is an Inuktitut pronunciation guide in the back.  In addition to the wonderful story, the pictures are done in very muted colours and have a very smooth texture, similar to watercolours.  My niece actually preferred this book and after we read it once, we read it several more times that evening until my voice started to get all croaky.

This is a fun story about Akilak who sets out on an adventure to her uncle's camp in order to get more food for her grandmother.  I thought this was going to take on a Red Riding Hood kind of twist, but it didn't.  It is a girl who goes on a physical journey, but also embarks on a journey of self-discovery.  I really liked the illustrations in this book as they struck me as being similar to Martchenko's drawings in Munsch's books.  Although I read this book to my niece, she preferred the other, at least at the time.

I really am looking forward to other books with which this publishing house will produce and am definitely keeping on eye on them for unique wonderful stories that are Canadian.