[.ca] Cremation of Sam McGee, The (ISBN 1550746065)

Amazon.ca:
No artist has painted the cold like Ted Harrison. In The Cremation of Sam McGee, the surrealist painter and children's illustrator from the Yukon brings Robert W. Service's famous poem to life in a palette of icy blues, blistering mauves, and searing pinks. Although originally written for adults, Service's turn-of-the-century ballad of a Tennessee gold digger who will do anything to get out of the Yukon's "cursed cold" has always appealed to a youthful sense of the ridiculous. In the tradition of the tall tales of Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, The Cremation of Sam McGee tells of how the dying McGee (fearing "the icy grave that pains") exacts a promise from the narrator to cremate him after he's gone. Harrison's bold, stark paintings capture the narrator's increasing sense of desperation as he dogsleds across the dark and silent tundra in search of a suitable crematorium for his "frozen chum." Of course, the joke is that once in the boiling furnace of a derelict ship, Sam wakes up and with a "smile you could see a mile" asks his companion to "'Please close that door. / It's fine in here, / but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm -- / Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, / it's the first time I've been warm." While the design of this 1986 picture book is a little stodgy and old-fashioned, the magic of Service's knee-smacking verses, combined with Harrison's dazzling art, is timeless. As Pierre Berton writes in the introduction, it "represents a happy marriage between the most eloquent of the Yukon poets and the most brilliant of the Yukon artists." --Lisa Alward

part of growing up:
I think just about anyone who has taken a literature class has been ENCOURAGED...\orequired\c to memorize this poem. And it's a darn good poem; tells a story that sounds, \oespecially to a younger person, very real\c. Robert Service has always been like...the 'other' Jack London. These two authors should be, \oif not already\c, required reading in any English/Literature class taught. This particular poem was always a good one to have memorized--- in order to recite it around the campfire at a Boy Scout camping trip. Just seeing the title in print brings back fond memories.

Service should be remembered along with Poe and Steinback:
The Cremation of Sam Magee is definatley Robert Services funniest poems ever, it shows a master genius at work and I shall always remember the words "Strange things are done in the midnight sun by the men who mole for gold" This book is a definate buy!!! I shall keep this book till the day I die