Customer Reviews

Little Fur #1: The Legend Begins

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I should have stopped reading Young Adult fiction a lifetime ago yet "Little Fur: The Legend Begins" jumped out at me from the shelf and I'm glad it did! The ecological truths it contains make it a valuable read for all ages. Following the quest and adventures of the charming heroine is a delight. Also, Little Fur has all the attributes of the Divine Feminine that are important to the cultural shift currently going on, away from patriarchal thinking and the wholesale depletion of nature's resources. Little Fur is a tiny "wise woman"; a reader of auras (by olfactory means!), a nurturer and healer of all green growing things and the woodland birds and animals. Part elf and part troll, she is a loving embodiment of sacred earth energy, a protector of the giant trees or "Old Ones" in the sacred grove, and a dweller of the "greenplace". If her feet were to touch anything not of the wild (ie. concrete) she would immediately be cast out of the wilderness and separated from the currents of earth magic forever. This powerful metaphor may point to how the collective soul of humanity (earth-dwellers all) may have been better off if the intrinsic principle of being in close proximity to the earth had been honored throughout the ages. Little Fur and her companions and allies (flora or fauna) are continually shocked by the stupidity and selfishness of the humans' activities. Most of the humans act as if they are NOT a part of the circle of earth energy. The zenith of this philosophy of separation from the natural world is represented by "rogue humans" responsible for crimes against the environment. Carrying her petition to stop them deep into a chasm underground, the beauty and spiritual truth at the heart of Little Fur's story culminates with a powerful "message to humanity" from the mystical Tree Guardian. Highly recommended.

I deeply disliked this book. I consider myself very environmentally conscious, but I found this book to be full of self-hate for humans in way that really offended me--Little Fur, when asking animals who live with humans for details about them has NIGHTMARES after their talks and although the animals say they like humans, "nothing he said ever made her think of them as anything but dangerous". She has no encounters to change this assumption by the end of the book. For an "earth-loving" book, there is also a lot of characterization of various animals as selfish, stupid, or cruel, of which I disapproved. For example, she describes "all bird minds" as "scrambled... no shadings to suggest a deeper intelligence." And this is all in just the first few pages... I could go on and on. To top it off, there were plot holes and inconsistencies that would irritate any thoughtful reader.

Isobelle Carmody's LITTLE FUR: THE LEGEND BEGINS provides grades 4-6 with a cute story of a half-elf, half-troll girl who cares for a magical grove of trees in the middle of a big city. Evil forces are out to destroy them - and it's up to Little Fur to journey into the human world to save them in this engaging tale of courage and fantasy.