The Bone Keeper [Hardcover]

Megan McDonald (Author), G. Brian Karas (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up

Try this book for Halloween, and for edge-of-the-seat suspense anytime.

The language of the telling rustles like dry grasses, crackles like bones shifting in the windblown sands. Emerging from it, the Bone Woman herself, bent over her stick like an arch of stone, searches this way and that across the wide, scoured distances outside her cave. On the ground, she's assembled the bones she needs, all but "that tiny piece at the tip of the tip of the tail." That one is still unfound. She looks further. Finally triumphant, she "dances with one side of her body, waits with the other." Yet it is a while before her creation stirs, shakes itself, stands. What will it be? A wolf. The paintings powerfully suggest the Bone Woman's intent, her dramatic context, her nature a crone. Inspired by creation myths from many desert cultures, words and artwork (some of which appear to be made of bone itself, or of bronze) cast an indelible spell.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a mythic narrative voice accompanied by primitive images, McDonald (Is This a House for Hermit Crab?) describes a mysterious old woman who sifts sand to find bones. Readers can almost hear a drumbeat accompaniment to the text: "Like the desert pack rat,/ the harvester ant,/ Bone Woman lives deep in a cave,/ a cave cluttered with bones, bones." Against an off-white chalkiness that suggests a sun-bleached skull, the crone's stooped silhouette seeks tiny bone pieces of long-dead creatures. "Some say Bone Woman brings the dead back to life," whispers the unseen narrator, who tells how the Bone Woman assembles "spine of snake, skull of lizard.../ claw of badger,/ wishbone of owl,/ wing bone of bat" into the skeleton of a wolf that, accompanied by Bone Woman's wailing and dancing, is reborn and lopes off into the night. Karas, in a departure from the pencil-cartoon style of Raising Sweetness (reviewed below), takes a minimalist approach to the dreamlike, ceremonial prose. He chooses excessively thick media that could be mud or clay, then shapes it like plaster or marks it with indentations. The illustrations in sandstone brown and pale yellow hues offer nary a hint of plant life, and their heavy, relief-sculpture quality acts as a counterbalance to the text's airy mysticism. Although this tale of death and creation is not attributed to a particular native tradition, the iconic art evokes prehistoric times and adds weight to the storyteller's hypnotic chant. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 3-An eerie tale with mythical qualities, set in the Southwestern desert. The protagonist is an elemental creature referred to as the Bone Keeper and additionally as Owl, Rattlesnake, or Bone Woman. This ancient entity wanders through the desert alternately laughing, singing, and chanting while collecting bones from the sand. She gathers her finds deep in a cave and then calls together the desert animals for a show of sorts-that of a skeleton maker. When at long last she has assembled her creation and performed the appropriate rituals, a flesh-and-blood wolf emerges. The process by which this miraculous transformation takes place is mysterious to say the least. Young readers will be puzzled by the text's enigmatic description of the Bone Keeper's supernatural machinations, as well as the illustrations. Artwork resembling primitive petroglyphs employs "a variety of materials, conventional and otherwise," to achieve a grainy and highly textured appearance. Most of the figures depicted are obscure and shadowy. The effect of both text and art is to create more mood than substance. There is too much left unspoken, perhaps lost in the sands of time, to convey a coherent story.
Rosalyn Pierini, San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: A DK Ink Book / DK Publishing, Inc.; 1st edition (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789425599
• ISBN-13: 978-0789425591
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,525,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

10 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ME

10. The first book I ever wrote was about a hermit crab, inspired by a pet I once owned.

9. My favorite color is purple.

8. I love to read mysteries. When I was Judy's age, I read all 56 classic Nancy Drew books . . . in order! Jeepers!

7. I used to collect scabs so I could examine them under the microscope that I got for my 8th birthday.

6. My four sisters and I often made up our own language, which included the words "Hoidi Boidi", "oogey", "retzel crummypuss" and "poony-poony".

5. My favorite TV show is JEOPARDY!

4. To research my Sisters Club book, THE RULE OF THREE, I toured San Francisco in search of the ultimate cupcake. The winner: Sleepless in San Francisco. Think chocolate + coffee.

3. When I was a kid, I fell down a hill from chasing the ice-cream truck and had to get stitches.

2. When I was a librarian, I used to tell stories in sign language. That's how I got the expression "same-same" for Judy.

1. I share a birthday (February 28) with a famous princess, race car driver and gangster, a Rolling Stone, a French tightrope walker, and a winning racehorse named Smarty Jones.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Hauntingly powerful, December 21, 2010

By 

Danny - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Bone Keeper (Hardcover)

Haunting. Perfect. Not for most western children (well, my three year old son LOVES it-- but he has been raised with the concepts of nature, death, rebirth and ancient story telling since infancy). Intense and beautiful illustrations. This is a poetic version of the ancient story of La Loba (Wold Woman). SO happy with my purchase!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NOT for children - Nightmares on every page, July 21, 2010

By 

Andrew M. Pedry "Andrew" (VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bone Keeper (Hardcover)

Not all animation is for kids and neither are all picture-format books. This book is not just 'bent' or 'broken' as the great defining words of Thomas Jefferson would have put it, but it is also truly twisted. Plain and simply not for kids under 13 - at the least
Both text and illustration form a nightmare on every page. For example: an illustration of a zombie wolf with glowing eyes is described as jolting as it's flesh and sinew re-wrap around its bones.
Even from a young-adult or scholarly perspective, the suitability as a cultural reference is questionable. Predictably, subjects of death and decay are prevalent throughout the book. However, they are portrayed not in a positive or natural light but as horrific dark thaumaturgical processes. Such legends were traditionally intended as hospice tools for the oldest and therefore wisest members of a tribe. In some tribes exposing children to such stories carried severe sanctions and even physical punishment. Exposing children to these stories was seen as the crime of stealing innocence. Even if taken in a shamanistic context the combined effect of the text and illustrations gives as much credit to a cultural tradition as the Blair Witch Project did to witchcraft - also not a children's film.
These pages are saturated with dementia, fear, insanity, darkness, horrors, isolation, and death without even a cultural excuse. Seeing it marketed as a children's book is an offense. The final product is of no credit to society and culture, only a deficit.