Arrow to the Sun, and: Songs of the Chippewa, and: Earth Namer, and: Baldur and the Mistletoe (review)

McDermott's Arrow to the Sun is a graphic production of exceptional power and beauty. The geometrical design-motifs are unmistakably derived from Southwest Indian patterns and are highly stylized, but their abstract qualities have been personalized and come across as vital and dramatic. The narrative, based on a Pueblo Indian myth, is terse and straightforward, employing a vocabulary that, for the most part, is within the range of most schoolchildren, though not preschoolers. The story is about a boy conceived by an earthly maiden from a spark of life from the Lord of the Sun. The boy, ostracized because he has no father, goes in search of his progenitor. Standing at last in the presence of his divine father, the boy has to prove himself by undergoing a series of trials, which are essentially rites of initiation, though they are not so designated. Having survived lions, serpents, bees, and lightning, the youth is acknowledged by his solar father and, "filled with the power of the sun," returns to earth. His return to the pueblo is celebrated by the people in a Dance of Life.

This allegory of Pueblo initiation rites seems to be intended as much for adults as for children. I say this because the fine drawings—in themselves a tour de force —are highly sophisticated. The author-illustrator has integrated the illustrative and decorative elements of his art-work, eliminating everything circumstantial and concrete; that is, strictly speaking, everything that is inessential. For this reason, Arrow to the Sun, at least in its visual aspect, may prove to be less accessible to children than to adults. As far as the story is concerned, the difficulty lies in another direction. The narrative is not communicated within a cultural-historical frame of reference. The result is that even the adult reader is not in a position to grasp the significance of the allegory; still less is he likely to relate the myth to actual initiation rites as performed by Pueblo Indians to this very day. The emotional impact of these rites on Pueblo boys and girls and their function of symbolically incorporating the children into the adult community are not treated. Hence, we have a book which is perhaps too sophisticated pictorially for children, but with a narrative that is too simple and too incomplete for adults. These criticisms aside—they apply to many children's books today—Arrow to the Sun is a beautiful book, one that sets a very high standard for graphic productions in its field.

Bierhorst and Servello's Songs of the Chippewa consists of songs adapted from the collections of Frances Densmore and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and arranged for piano and guitar. The book achieves a perfect unity of mood with its brief, gentle lyrics and the fine pictures by Joe Servello. The mood is one of harmony between man and nature and between young and old. The pictures show scenes of domestic Indian life, mostly at dusk or at night: animals glimpsed in the forest, a mother with her infant, parents playing with their baby under the trees, the fears and dreams of Indian children. The lyrics usually consist of only a handful of words, either in English translation, or in the language of the Chippewa, or even in nonsense syllables.

This is a special purpose book: the musical scores obviously are intended to be played and sung. The pictures correspond in content to the short lyrics, but only approximately; in fact, the illustrations can stand by themselves simply as charming vignettes of man living in nature, and still in a state of innocence. Based on ethnographic materials gathered over fifty years ago on the western shores of the...