THE GIRL WHO DREAMED ONLY GEESE,
Howard Norman
Selection read by author Howard Norman, who collected these Inuit tales.

In "Why the Rude Visitor Was Flung by Walrus," two shamans, or wizards, go mano a mano in a battle over who will run a peaceful village. It's up to the resident wizard to come up with magic more powerful than the "rude visitor" with his smelly shirt.

THINGS TO DO ONLINE

Meet the Inuit
Here’s a brief history of the Inuit

Play a game
Try an Inuit-related game.

Get to know walrus
Did you notice that the village shaman who likes to hang out with the walrus and listen to the icebergs breaking up doesn’t have a name, even though he’s such a powerful wizard? Wonder why. Anyway, here’s a reason why he and all Inuit love walrus and a great introduction to the animal “that walks with its teeth”. He’s lucky to have an island full of them nearby, too. They’re an endangered species.

Illustrate!
Draw a picture while you listen to the show. If you have a scanner at home or at school or your local library, sent it to us through the Contact Us page.

Make an Inuit snack
The Inuit, known as Eskimo as well, get their name from their dependence on raw meat. Camel’s Hump Cooks gives you a recipe for a “Seal Snack.”



FROM THE CHR LIBRARIAN

Howard Norman’s books
The story "Why the Rude Visitor Was Flung by Walrus" from The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese is among many Howard Norman collected while visiting Inuit families, mostly around Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, near Hudson's Bay. His versions keep a lot of the flavor of the North because he listened so carefully as the stories were told, sometimes many times. In the works are more Inuit stories about the smelly shirt and the shaman Tiuk. His other collections of stories from the Far North are Where the Chill Came From and Northern Tales. Two picture books are How Glooscap Outwits the Ice Giants and Other Tales of the Maritime Indians and Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout.

Related books
Howard Norman also has a chapter about his own childhood in a wonderful book called When I Was Your Age; Original Stories About Growing up, edited by Amy Ehrlich. For a modern classic about growing up Inuit, read The Shaman's Nephew: A Life in the Far North (Stoddart Kids) by Simon Tookoome. He’s an Inuit nomad, artist and traditional hunter, who worked for 10 years with Winnipeg author Sheldon Oberman on the book. It won the prestigious Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Literature for its “fresh look at the Inuit experience” says a Toronto Star review.

Children need heroes
In a collection of Inuit children’s stories about “accessible heroes” called Courageous Spirits: Aboriginal Heroes of Our Children the Canadian publisher Theytus Books presents heroic tales about “mothers, fathers, aunts…, grandfathers…, chiefs…and friends told by Aboriginal children.” The stories take you to “a world where innocence and trust are the backbone of the learning system…, where example is the greatest virtue…, where heroes are measured not by their accomplishments as much as by their day-by-day acts of living.”

Learning more
Perhaps your family would like to learn more about life in an Inuit village in modern times. That’s the subject of the Canadian video My Life in Nunavik, directed by Bobby Kenuajuak for the National Film Board of Canada. It’s for somewhat older children, but shows a community in which the life of the village is still tied to hunting and fishing.

The Canadiana Collection at the University of Vermont recommends a 15-minute film, Inuit Kids. Pre-Inuit Eskimo life is the focus of an exhibition of Palaeo-Eskimo artifacts and art. The forerunners of the Inuit were the first to find ways to live in the extreme cold of the Arctic. Take a look at “Life on the Edge of the World”.

Beauty in the North
Many people have celebrated the stark beauty of the “Frozen North.” A challenging but fascinating look at this beauty—with an Inuit poem, photographs of Arctic animals and terrain and an explanation of the difference between “Eskimo” and “Inuit”--is BeautyWorlds.com.