Wow. A beautiful, heartbreaking book. Although in picture book format, I believe this book, both in terms of story and illustrations, will appeal more to older readers. It is the story of a recently arrived culture devastating an indigenous culture, like the rabbits invading the land of possums in Australia. The illustrations are phenomenal.

The illustrations are raw in muted colors, mostly browns, blues, and black foregrounds. As the story draws to the climax, the pages grow darker, symbolizing the demise of two cultures that cannot symbiotically coexist. The simple wording comes to life with the artwork. Though the book jacket promotes the book as one to show a cautionary tale of nature’s downfall, the tale can also be used to demonstrate the triumph of one culture over another culture’s rights and traditions or the ravaging affects of war in the form of a precursor. Older readers can gain much by reading this along with Popov’s Why? ( )

http://12frogs.com/reading/reviews/20... ( )