Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, as told to author Christy Jordan-Fenton; illustrated by Liz Amini-Holms,
A Stranger at Home
Annick Press, 2011.

Age 8-12

A Stranger at Home, sequel to the authors’ award-winning 2010 Fatty Legs, is the story of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s return to her Inuit family in northwest Canada after two years in a Catholic boarding school, where she learned English, ate different foods, and became unrecognizable even to her own mother. A collaboration between Margaret and her daughter-in-law, Christy Jordan-Fenton, the book captures the process of re-entry faced by anyone returning from life-changing experiences in another culture. In this book, those challenges are framed in terms of losses to the Inuit community when young people are educated in faraway boarding schools.

Unlike aboriginal Australians, who underwent similar difficulties, Margaret was not forced to leave her home on Banks Island. In fact, her father, who also had a boarding school education, had voiced reservations about her desire to leave home and learn English. He understood better than his wife how hard the transition back home would be for their daughter. Time does its healing for Margaret; she is aided by observing the alienation of another outsider in the village and by her growing compassion for his situation. In the end, she bravely agrees to return to the school to accompany her younger sisters so that she can protect them and ease their adjustment to the wider world.

Liz Amini-Holms has done the story a great service with her evocative paintings of the Inuit people in their traditional clothing and native landscape. Her soft, dark palette and slightly blurry images give an exotic yet emotionally intimate feel to the scenes she illustrates. Margaret’s family photographs add further visual documentation in an appealing presentation. Each is referenced alongside the relevant text by a small icon and a page number that indicates the corresponding full-size image in the back matter. Also included are a map of the Northwest Territories and brief biographies of the authors and illustrator. Where the text uses Inuit words, a colored box at the bottom of the page defines the term.

Young readers will find Margaret’s story both historically informative and heartbreakingly poignant.

Charlotte Richardson
November 2011

In our current issue of PaperTigers, which focuses on Canadian Aboriginal Children’s Literature, we feature the reprint of an article by Nadine C. Fabbi, Associate Director of the Canadian Studies Center in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, in which she has put together a set of picture books to introduce children to Inuit culture and Northern/Nunavut history:

Elementary school teachers and librarians can successfully introduce children to Inuit culture and Northern/Nunavut history by having them read the ten selected books in this article and then enhancing these stories with additional curriculum and lesson plans. Children’s literature from the North is relatively recent with all but one of the suggested books being published in the 1990s or since 2000. All of the books are excellent in terms of quality (several are awards winners) and engaging for the young reader with beautiful illustrations. Each book also serves as an introduction to Inuit mythology, the history of the Northwest Passage and missionary schools, the importance of the inukshuk, and the vital place of the polar bear in Inuit culture. The entire “selection” makes for an excellent library of the Canadian North for children.

You can read the whole article here. The set includes our current selection for The Tiger’s Bookshelf, Arctic Stories by Michael Kusugak and illustrated by Vladyana Langer Krykorka (Annick, 1998); and I was particularly struck by what Nadine writes about the importance of the polar bear in Inuit culture:

Another key part of Inuit life is the role of the polar bear both for survival and in terms of the special attributes given to the animal. Children love to learn about animals and the polar bear is (more…)

Each of the four stories in Arctic Adventures – Tales from the Lives of Inuit Artists, retold by Raquel Rivera and illustrated by Jirina Marton (Groundwood Books/ House of Anansi Press, 2007), makes a perfect bedtime story – but be ready to count in some extra time to look at the short biography of the artist protagonist in each one, along with an example of the art. This corelation between each story and an artist makes this a very special book. Older Brother read it on his own for the PaperTigers Reading Challenge in 2008 and you can read his reaction to it here.

All the stories describe events in the artists’ lives before their move away from the traditional Inuit way of life, through circumstances that are explained in each case. In “Pudlo and Kapik Go Hunting”, a hunting trip nearly ends in disaster when artist Pudlo Pudlat’s nephew Kapiq is stranded on an ice floe; “Kenojuak and the Goddess of the Sea”, describes Kenojuak Ashevak’s childhood encounter with Talelayu, Goddess of the Sea; in “Oonark’s Arctic Adventure” we join Jessie Oonark on her perilous journey “in off the land” in the Back River Area to Baker Lane; and Lazarusie Ishulutak shared his experiences with the author of two very different encounters with polar bears, for “Lazarusie and the Polar Bears”. Through the narrative young readers/listeners (and indeed adult readers) will absorb many details of Inuit culture – and there’s a map and a good glossary at the end too, as well as suggested further reading and an author’s note giving details of her sources for each story.

Marton’s atmospheric and expressive pastel illustrations transport readers to the Frozen North and provide a coherence between the stories – and the photograph of the artist that follows each story in a double-page spread, along with biographical details and discussion of their artwork, adds a very special dimension to the book that will intrigue young listeners/readers. And this is where sharing the book comes into its own, as the realisation that these stories happened to real, identifable people is something young people will want to talk through. And, of course, there are some interesting anecdotes too – like the following:

“When Pudlo was a child, he liked to draw on the walls of his family’s iglus, especially on the ice windows. But mothers discourage their children from doing this.

“Don’t carve up the wall, ” Pudlo’s mother would tell him.

Pudlo didn’t begin drawing on paper until the 1960s, when he was in his mid forties.”

So next time your small person gets creative on your walls…

And in the meantime, do seek out this beautiful book.