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  • Rabbit’s Snow Dance: A Traditional Iroquois Story by James Bruchac, ad.
  • Jeannette Hulick
Bruchac, James ,. ad. Rabbit’s Snow Dance: A Traditional Iroquois Story; ad. by James and Joseph Bruchac; illus. by Jeff Newman. Dial, 2012. 32p. ISBN 978-0-8037-3270-4 $16.99 R 5–8 yrs.

Long-tailed Rabbit’s got a hankering for the “tasty leaves and buds” that grow in the treetops, so even though it’s summer, he decides to sing his snow song (“‘EEOOO!’ Thump! Thump! ‘EE-OOO!’ Thump! Thump! ‘YO, YO, YO! YO, YO, YO!’”) to create a bank of snow that will elevate him to the right height to grab his snack. Rabbit quickly gets carried away, however, and soon the subsequent snowfall has covered not only the ground but other animals as well. A satisfied and now tired Rabbit falls asleep on a branch, and while he sleeps, the snow melts; the next morning, he steps off the branch and plummets to the earth, losing bits of his long tail in the tree along the way. The chastened (and now short-tailed) Rabbit learns to wait for winter before singing his snow song again, and the bits of tail he left in the tree became what we now know as pussy willows. The Bruchacs’ retelling of this traditional Iroquois tale is measured in pace yet informally conversational. The picturesque language (“Azikanapo. That word means it will snow foot wrappers, great [End Page 288] big flakes of snow”) makes it a pleasure to read aloud while the sonorous repeated phrases (“I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO! I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO!”) invite audience participation. With sweeping inky brush strokes and strong horizontal lines, Newman’s watercolor, gouache, and ink illustrations are intriguing in their angular stylization. The Bruchacs offer no note about the origins of this tale, but the story is definitely worth a readaloud session and could be a useful addition to a unit on pourquoi tales.

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