Totem Tale by Deb Vanasse

Totem Tale Reviews

• 
  Shannon

  Great, great introduction to totems. I'd been searching for a book JUST like this to precede our trip to the Burke Museum, but I happened upon it a week too late. Doesn't talk much about the symbolism of each totem animal (I used Sharing Our World: Animals of the Native Northwest Coast for that), but a solid, brief introduction nonetheless.
• 
  Lara

  This is a good book to use in connection with creating totem animals. It helps kids to understand that the totems also tell a story and have meaning to the people who create them. First I teach them about Tlignit carver Nathan Jackson, and show slides. I then have kids brainstorm native animals to Alaska. I read the story and demo how to stylize the animal, traditional color use, and have them thinking about the story of their animal while creating the work.
• 
  Dolly

  This is an entertaining story that helps teach children a little about the cultural significance and meaning of different totems. The narrative is humorous and the illustrations are colorful. I liked the tall tale style of the story and how the ending resolves the conflict. I think this story would be appropriate for children aged 5 and up.
• 
  Kris

  I have mixed feelings about this one. The author lives in Alaska, but from what I could find, she isn’t a member of any of the tribes that make totem poles. She does teach in a Yup’ik village. That being said, while this isn’t attributed to a particular tribe, it does stick to one story about one totem pole, and it is told pretty well. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the cartoonish illustrations, but my son loved them, and this gave us a chance to learn about totem poles, the tribes that they have significance for, and the artists who make them.
• 
  Kest Schwartzman

  A nice quick intro to northwest coast art, told in story form that easily obfuscates it's educational nature.
• 
  Mora

  Very hard to find! I used it to teach students about indigenous people of the Northwest and their culture.
• 
  Bekkah Riecke

  One of the students in my placement chose this from the media center and we read it while waiting for the class to finish having their hearing checked. I was very pleased with the way the illustrations complimented the story.
  
  This book would be good to use for language arts as an example of a folk tale or legend. It would also work well as a way to introduce an art around the world culture study. I also feel like it would work well in a math lesson because of the problem solving skills used by the characters to find their place on the totem. They had to use logic to figure out the correct order of the animals and it reminded me of the order of operations.
• 
  The Romantic Rush Blog

  I use this book in my art classroom and my students LOVE it- helps u understand Native American culture and artforms, and we use it to think about what we'd have as our own spiritual totems and how art is used by different culture and peoples for different needs and reasons.
• 
  Ck

  A great story about a raven, grizzly bear, wolf, beaver, eagle and a frog.
• 
  Readergirl77

  Cute story, great illustrations.
• 
  Adam

  The pages of this book were on signs along the trail when we were cross country skiing at Sun Mountain Lodge this weekend.