How the Stars Fell into the Sky
Jerrie Oughton, illustrated by Lisa Desimini
ISBN: 0395587980
Billed as a "Navajo Legend" on the cover, the back flap reveals the text to be drawn from a National Geographic article.
I really like the illustrations here, and how the text is presented in a small confined area surrounded by white space, opposite lush, page-spanning illustrations in free brush patterns and undulations.
I don't like the story. The Woman is obsessed with the "laws" and wants to put them out somewhere that everyone will see them and follow them. She can't figure out where to post them where they won't be erased eventually by time and wear, and The Man suggests in the sky, by using her pile of jewelry/stars/flowers? that she has at her feet.
She starts, and the Coyote eventually joins in, but he's impatient, and finally just flings the blanketful of stars up into the sky helter-skelter, pissing off the woman, and forever making it so that people will never know or be able to follow the laws.
So - that's weird. I think that if the idea had been to record stories or history or memories, it wouldn't have struck me as so prescriptive and weirdly angry and moralistic. But the focus on THE LAWS just really turned me off.
Which is sad, because the artwork is beautiful, and the basic idea (coyote screws something up) is a common folk-motif that deserves to be used.
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