Dreamcatcher
Grade 1-4-- What was life like for an Ojibway child ``in a time long ago?'' For a baby, like the one at the center of this gentle and lyrical book, it means lying in a cradleboard at the center of family life, ``in the moon of the raspberries,'' while mother works, children play, and father returns with a canoe full of fish. For a big sister, it means helping with the berry-drying and watching grandmother fashion a toy. And it means fashioning a ``dream net'' from willow and nettle-stalk to hang at baby's head, where it catches dreams that even a big sister might fear, while letting good dreams--of sucking maple suger, dancing, running--come through. Young's pastels are vibrantly colored but as tender as the text. The faces in soft shadow or semi-profile could be Everychild's, but the beautifully filtered light belongs only to a woodland-and-water setting. The pages are bordered with a flower garland that might come from the folk art of many peoples. The artist's treatment emphasizes the universally human as well as the culturally particular in this empathic glimpse of Ojibway life. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, SeattleCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.