Just finished this book, and loved it. Started off dark, as my daughter, put it -- I read the first few paragraphs to her -- but it is after all set in the far North. It's a mythical story of a shaman named John who must embark on a journey to get the world-songs for his soon-be-born daughter, Soonchild, who apparently is unwilling to come out of her mother's womb. Hoban is an engaging, imaginative writer and this book, published post-humously tackles some of the terrain he explored in Moment Under the Moment. Like his other children's book -- The Mouse and His Child -- this story operates at several levels at once, and this layered metaphoric quality is what makes it appealing.An aside ... in my last package of review books for PaperTigers, there were a few books about Inuit culture and Inuit mythology. In Hoban's book, he refers to a BBC documentary called The Kingdom of the Ice Bear, and I was wondering if perhaps the British imagination had been caught by this realm of stories which feature giants, and tricksters, and a host of interesting animal spirits. Of course, what Hoban is doing with this material is quite unusually filtered thru his particular voice and sensibility. Looking at the cover with its pattern of swirling wolves, I wondered why this book was listed as a 14+ in the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize longlist for 2012. Some younger children might like it--on one level it's a traditional hero-quest narrative, where the hero must reluctantly risk his life and even lose his life in a struggle with cosmic forces, and many of those tales are considered suitable for younger children. But the hero, Sixteen-Face John, is an out-of-shape shaman in a very contemporary North. Yes, he carves figures out of bone, and his wife scrapes hides to make boots, but he also drinks Coke, drives a ski-doo, and watches baseball on TV. The illustrations by Alexis Deacon really make the book special. The opening pages are on blue paper, as John learns what he has to do so that Soonchild, who can't hear the songs of the world, can be born. When he dies the first time, swallowed by Yarluk the killer whale, three wordless 2-page spreads on white show what happens. When he recognizes the ghost wolves as part of him, the pages turn sepia, and the final confrontation with the demon who is swallowing the world is on black, followed by grey shading back to blue as he completes the journey. So there is much here for older children and for adults as well.
What do You think about Soonchild (2012)?
This book was suppose to be a kids book but I do not know many kids who would understand it.
—tandjswitzer
