– How the Raven Stole the Sun

“How the Raven Stole the Sun” is a book of a Native Alaskan folktale and the copy I listened to was written by Maria Williams and illustrated by Felix Virgil.. It is about how raven, a trickster spirit, managed to trick a wealthy person to release the sun, moon, and stars into the sky so everyone could enjoy them, even if most of the reason why he did it was because he was curious about what was in the boxes. This is one of the only Native Alaskan stories I can remember off of my head because I was read it frequently in my preschool and I still enjoy the story to this day. I could not find any biases in it other than potentially the wealthy person in the story being bad (but eat the rich, so go off). But everyone in the story (despite the few people) are native alaskan, so I think that it would be fine considering that it isn’t playing into any stereotypes that would be bad for the group.

I think this book would do great to expand someone’s library in a diverse way because it’s a fun story with beautiful, colorful illustrations that would hold a child’s attention, and it’s also folklore of native Alaskans that don’t portray them in a way that is harmful to them. I will admit that because this is a folktale it is iffy to share with children too much (as the article discusses), but if someone is looking for a place for an indigenous book in their collection, “How the Raven Stole the Sun” would be a wonderful place for that. 

– How the Raven got his Crooked Nose 

“How the Raven got his Crooked Nose” is an Alaskan Dena’ina Fable. The retold story I listened to was written by Barbara J. Atwater and Ethan J. Atwater and illustrated by Mindy Dwyer. The story was about how a raven trickster named Chulyen got a crooked nose because he didn’t fix it when he put it back on his face after stealing it back once he lost it. The story teaches that when you do something, you should take it slow and do it right so you won’t have to live with something unfixable–like Chulyen’s crooked nose. I think this story was very enjoyable and I loved how the grandmother was telling it to her grandchild. I couldn’t find any sort of biases in the story and I think it was just a lovely fable to teach the lesson of not rushing through everything if you can help it. 

I think this book would also be a wonderful addition to any library if they were wishing to diversify it a bit more. As it is a Fable, I would say that you should be careful about not having too many as they can be questionable at times and not teach the right things, but this is a simple, fun, story that should be perfectly fine. This was a colorful book with interesting and beautiful drawings and ways of showing things that I haven’t seen in the children’s books I’ve read.