Alaska Boots for Chelsea by Phyllis Adams & Illus by Kathleen Lynch

Another Alaska book! 

Hopefully you don't get tired of Alaska books because, I have every intention of blogging about each and every Alaskan book that catches my attention. #noshame

This book is a tender look at personal responsibility, forgiveness, and renewal with a few traditional customs of the Athabaskan people thrown in. Or it looks at the traditional customs of the Athabaskan people with a side order of personal responsibility, forgiveness, and renewal. Depends on your perspective.

Chelsea is finally old enough for her very own pair of boots. Her sitsu (grandmother) tells her how to care for the boots as she makes them. 

"...they will be forever warm and light if you do not get them wet. Once they are wet, they become very heavy. You will feel like a Raven without wings. You can't fly, you can't dance."

These boots are made from the animals that are vital to traditional Athabaskan life--moose skin, caribou skin, and beaver fur. 

That is one thing I love about traditional customs--they tie people to the land so closely. Someone related to them likely shot, processed the meat, skinned the skin, and tanned the hide of these animals so they could be used. It is so much more intimate than mass commercial production. Of course it is also less productive and efficient. Trade offs! 

Beadwork decorations of Sitka rose and forget-me-nots.

And so Chelsea has her marvelous boots! And they keep her warm and make her dance all winter. 

But when the boots get wet in the spring, Chelsea throws them in a cache to hopefully let them dry out before anyone sees that they are wet. Except little creatures find her boots before Chelsea remembers to come back to get them.

When winter came again....

Chelsea went to find her boots. And instead of the beautiful boots her grandmother had made, she found damaged and ruined boots.

When she confesses all to Sitsu, Sitsu hugs her and tells her she can repair them. 

They are ready for dancing again for the potlatch.

And for watching the aurora borealis. 

At the back, there is a brief note from the author about Athabaskan traditions Chelsea experiences in the book and a glossary for terms. 

Arctic Dreams by Carloe Gerber

This is a sweet little book of the north. A mother lulls her child to sleep by telling it all about the arctic world he lives in. 

Caribou

Tucking in all snug and warm.

The mother tells her son to think of the moose, the musk ox. 

The arctic ocean.

A blue and white world!

A technicolor world in the fall, from lichen covered rocks.

Spring time wildflowers

Slumber sweet, my little one. 

Slumber sweet.

Taste the first snowfall of autumn. 

Breathe the moist pine air of forests. 

Interestingly, Alaska has no pine except in the southeast. So I am not sure where this book is supposed to be set. After check tree ranges, I have concluded that this book has to be about the Hudson Bay area of Ontario. 

Northern lights

Because what good is a dream if you can't ride a caribou? 

Or cuddle a polar bear? 

A little background on ancient Eskimo songs. I thought the term Eskimo was very passe, but apparently many Alaskan Native prefer Eskimo to Inuit, since the Inuit are a very specific people, while Eskimo embraces a range of tribes.