Raven

Melanie Orr

Children’s Literature

Blog

“Raven”

Illustrated and Written by Gerald McDermott

Medium: The paintings in this book were done in gouache, colored pencil, and pastel on heavyweight cold-press watercolor paper. 

Summary: This book is about bringing light into the world from a folklore point of view.  The world is dark and a raven finds the ball of light and puts it in the sky for the world to receive light.

Content: The books genre is one of folklore.  This reflects the beliefs and culture of people in the Pacific Northwest.  In this folklore the bird is given supernatural strength of changing from one entity to another and bringing light to the world.  It has total elements of mythology that as the book states explains the origins of the Earth and the relation between humans.

Literary Elements:

Setting: The Pacific Northwest in various places, the sky, the hut/house.

Characterization:  The characters in the story are flat, they are not real pictures but images of a culture and group of people.  The images do represent people from the Pacific Norhtwest.

Plot: A bird Raven, is distraught and wanting to help the world, changes to a pine needle and lands in water that a woman drinks, and she births a child who is later discovered to be Raven.  Raven then finds the light hidden in the house and restores light to the world.  The central character is the Raven and that is who the story is revolved around and the plot is finally restoring light to the world.

Theme:  The theme of the story is that the world is dark and in need of someone or something to come save the world by supplying light.  The mystery is the light of the world, the sun, is hidden in several boxes, but the raven is the lucky person to find it and rescue the world from darkness.

Style:  This story is a folklore and tells a story is a very descriptive way.  The time-darkness, place where the story happens, and the characters all are relevant and important to the story. The pictures in the story are connected to the text, for example the raven turns into a pine needle and there is a large vivid picture of the pine needle.  The next text states that a woman drinks water from the well where the needle fell.  The picture is large and actually shows the pin needle in the bowl of water the woman drinks.  The word choice in the book such as Sky Chief is a reflection of the culture in the Pacific Northwest.  I believe this story is told through the omniscient narrator point of view because of the word choices in the story.  Ex. (He, she, when the girl)  The author isn’t telling the story from his point of view.

Reflection/Evaluation:  The book is a great book to spark imagination in a child.  The book is an easy read because the pictures match the text on each page.  The colors in the book are vivid and match the mood of the story.  When the Raven was flying through the darkness, the pages were dark.  When the raven found the ball of light, the pages were bright.  The colors in the book are bright and inviting for children.  Its culturally enriching and an easy read for children.