[.ca] A Coyote Columbus Story (ISBN 0888998309)

Amazon.ca:
Thomas King is a master of many forms--novels, stories, radio comedy, children's books--so it is not surprising that he would first publish A Coyote Columbus Story as a picture book and then rework it, even more successfully, as a short story in his collection One Good Story, That One. Children, of course, will be quite happy to stick with the original. After all, this is a story meant to be read aloud in the tradition of the oral literature of Native North Americans. King, an American by birth of Cherokee and Greek heritage who has lived in Canada for years, has attempted to convey a sense of both the traditional myths and stories and the style of their telling. Packaging his stories in the recognizable form of the colourful and oversized children's book makes sense in that regard; King wants the old traditions to mix with the new because that is exactly the reality of young Native North Americans. A Coyote Columbus Story may be a humorous retelling of the arrival of Europeans in the form of an avaricious Christopher Columbus, but it is not frivolous, despite the frivolity of the large cast of characters and the loud and somewhat garish artwork by William Kent Monkman. Parents and children should read this book together, enjoy the mischievous antics of Coyote, and talk about the perception of history King skewers. --Jonathan Dewar