Fiction Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
The Raven Steals the Light
Drawings by Bill Reid
- Publisher
- Douglas & McIntyre
- Initial publish date
- Feb 1996
- Category
- Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology, Native American Studies
- Recommended Age
- 9
- Recommended Grade
- 4
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781550544817
- Publish Date
- Feb 1996
- List Price
- $18.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
An elegant reissue of a timeless collection of Haida myths, with a new preface by Claude Levi-Strauss.
Ten masterful, complex drawings by Bill Reid are accompanied by ten episodes from Haida mythology told by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst. The result brings Haida art and mythology alive as never before in an English-speaking world. The collection includes, says Reid, "a good selection of bestiality, adultery, violence, thievery and assault, for those who like that sort of thing."
About the authors
Bill Reid, one of the finest artists to work in the Native American tradition, has numerous books documenting and revering his visual art. He is also the author of Solitary Raven, Out of the Silence and, with Bill Holm, Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialogue on Craftsmanship and Aesthetics.
Robert Bringhurst is a poet, typographer and linguist, well known for his award-winning translations of the Haida storytellers Skaay and Ghandl, and for his translations of the early Greek philosopher-poet Parmenides. His manual The Elements of Typographic Style has itself been translated into ten languages and is now one of the world’s most influential texts on typographic design. Among his most recent publications is a pair of essay collections, The Tree of Meaning (GP, 2006) and Everywhere Being is Dancing (GP, 2007). Bringhurst lives on Quadra Island, off the British Columbia coast.
Robert Bringhurst's profile page
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a French social anthropologist who became a leading scholar in the structural approach to social anthropology. Levi-Strauss was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal in 1966 and the Erasmus Prize in 1975. He was awarded several honorary doctorate degrees from prestigious institutions such as Oxford, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. His books included A World on the Wane, Structural Anthropology, The Savage Mind, Anthropologu and Myth, and Look, Listen, Read.
Librarian Reviews
The Raven Steals the Light
Bill Reid’s beautiful, stylized designs illustrate ten stories from Haida Gwaii in this reissue of a 1984 publication that has since become a classic. As Reid says himself these are “slight entertainments, mere glancing versions of the grand old tales.” They tell of Raven the trickster, the great transformer, whose antics cause such trouble for the people yet also bring treasures. Reid is one of Canada’s most well-known Aboriginal artists. Bringhurst is a poet, cultural historian and the author of numerous books.Caution: In Raven and the Big Fisherman, Raven has intimate relations with the Fisherman’s wife and the word “cuckolded” may need to be explained. Also, Raven is brutally beaten.
Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools. 2007-2008.
