Hi Americans. Please consider using this affiliate link to Amazon.com for your shopping. https://amzn.to/3FT6I5Y
Hi Canadians. Please consider using this affiliate link to Amazon.ca for your shopping. https://amzn.to/3HDzQiWSo, just pick the Amazon location that best suits your delivery needs then consider this quality book or anything else you need.
This heartwarming, thought-filled book about a Pueblo Indian boy takes place in the 1500’s in the Rio
Grande area of New Mexico. Whispers of the Wolf by Pauline Ts’o was written with heart to capture those cultural traits that might have been shared among the many hundreds of Pueblos that existed before the arrival of the Spanish and that still resonate today.
Pauline Ts’o who is both author and illustrator, wanted to capture the richness and vibrancy of today’s living Pueblo Indian culture. According to Rosemary Apple Blossom Lonewolf, a American Indian artist of the Santa Clara Pueblo Tribe who prepared the Foreword and Vivian Arviso Deloria, an educational consultant and enrolled member of the Navaho Nation, who wrote the Preface, she has succeeded.
I tell you these details because it is so important that stories that speak of American Indian cultures capture the right spirit and cultural values. Pauline Ts’o is of Chinese American descent but she has spent decades photographing the region and getting to know its people. She has succeeded in what she set out to do
But aside from its cultural value, this is a warm and entertaining story of a boy named Two Bird who finds a wolf pup and raises the pup to be his companion in all the things that boys did at that time, and still do now in the Pueblo villages. Two Bird and his wolf became constant companions, hunting rabbits, running races and telling stories to other kids at night.
But as summer turned to fall, story time at night is interrupted by wild wolf calls. As the young wolf pup strained at his leash, Two Bird realized that he had to let his wolf go so it could fulfil the life it was born for and not just the life Two Bird wanted for him.
Such an important lesson in growing up and letting go, in knowing that each person and each being has a right to their own destiny!
Pauline Ts’o’s warmly, softly-drawn illustrations come with detailed endpages explaining the cultural and historical meanings of what she has drawn. This book is perfect for kids age 6-10, and older kids who want to know more about the Pueblo Indians. Before you travel out west on holiday read this book with your kids and they will see the region with new eyes.
Published by Wisdom Tales Press, I bought this book from the Southwest Indian Foundation. You can buy it from their catalogue or by following the Amazon affiliate link in the comment section below. Please subscribe and hit the notification bell so you will be the first on your block to hear about other quality books for kids. If you know of other culturally important books that I should review, please let me know in the comment section.