TRICKSTER AND THE FAINTING BIRDS

Norman (The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese, 1997) presents seven trickster tales collected from living Algonquian storytellers, collated from multiple versions and backed up by specific source notes. That said, the scholarship is unobtrusive, and readers will have no trouble following Trickster from one pickle to the next. They may be puzzled at times—in the first story a meeting with a man/bear-hermit persuades Trickster, for some reason, to stop boasting that he’s “best at being alone”—but they’ll also laugh when Fox is bamboozled out of all but the feet of a brace of ducks, or when Trickster is tricked out in a coat of moldy fish heads in one tale, and a weasel’s tail in another. The lines of text are varied in length to evoke the cadences of live telling, and Pohrt’s human and animal figures are depicted with expressive, fine-lined realism. An inviting, inarguably authentic collection. (Folklore. 8-12)