Jordan Wheeler, illustrated by Christopher Auchter,
Just a Walk
Theytus Books, 2009.

Rating: G*

The author, Jordan Wheeler, is a Cree television scriptwriter. He has created a humourous, rhyming adventure featuring a young First Nations boy, Chuck, exploring the local environment. This tale alternates between good and bad events as Chuck journeys down a nearby creek, into the forest and up into the sky over his house. He meets a fish, a badger, a bear, and a hawk. The story offers a good framework for creative writing for beginning writers. Younger students will enjoy chanting along and filling in the rhymes as the teacher reads it aloud.

"Chuck thought he was finished,

he hadn’t a chance.

But just then his long braids

got caught in a branch.

High in the sky

he hung safe in an oak.

But as luck would have it,

the branch cracked and broke.

Down to the water

Chuck felt himself float.

But lucky for him he fell into a boat."

Christopher Auchter is a Haida animator and illustrator. His full colour drawings are action snapshots of Chuck’s adventures and will entertain young readers. The hilarious facial expressions of Chuck add considerably to the humourous escapades in the story.

Grade 2 students will be able to read this story independently. The font is stylized to emphasize certain key phrases and add another visual element which makes it fun to read.

Recommended.

Thematic Links: Outdoor Education; Environment; Humour; First Nations

Lori Austin
Vol. 15, number 4
April 2010

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.