Wolverine and Little Thunder: An Eel Fishing Story by Alan Syliboy
Celebrated Mi’kmaw artist behind The Thundermaker returns with a new story about friendship and the importance of traditional knowledge — now in paperback!
From the bestselling creator of The Thundermaker, Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy, comes another adventure featuring Little Thunder and Wolverine—a trickster, who is strong and fierce and loyal. The two are best of friends, even though Wolverine can sometimes get them into trouble. Their favourite pastime is eel fishing, whether it’s cutting through winter ice with a stone axe or catching eels in traditional stone weirs in the summer. But that all changes one night, when they encounter the giant river eel—the eel that is too big to catch. The eel that hunts people!
At once a universal story of friendship and problem-solving, Wolverine and Little Thunder is a contemporary invocation of traditional Mi’kmaw knowledge, reinforcing the importance of the relationship between the Mi’kmaq and eel, a dependable year-round food source traditionally offered to Glooscap, the Creator, for a successful hunt.
Artist Alan Syliboy studied privately with Shirley Bear and attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where, twenty-five years later, he was invited to sit on the Board of Governors. Alan looks to the indigenous Mi’kmaw petroglyph tradition for inspiration and develops his own artistic vocabulary out of those forms. He is also the author and illustrator of the celebrated book (and multimedia art show) The Thundermaker, which was shortlisted for First Nations Reads, and more recently the board book Mi’kmaw Animals. He lives in Truro, Nova Scotia.
- 40 pages, softcover