Customer Reviews

Star Trails: Navajo

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Don Childrey's Star Trails: Navajo is an eye-opener-literally and figuratively. Not only does the book help us to see the stars in new ways, but it also provides a wealth of detail about how Native Americans understood, explained, and populated the night sky.

Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with the Greek constellations and can recount some information about Orion or the Big Dipper, but how many of us know anything at all about the equally fascinating myths and legends that emerged on our own continent?

Read this book, and your night sky will be changed forever. You'll look up to find Rabbit Tracks, the Coyote Star, and Man with Feet Apart. They are excellent company, and we owe Childrey a debt for preserving them and bringing them to our attention.

His words and illustrations link us to the Pathway of Departed Spirits-whether they be the ancient Navaho dreamers or the author's own departed friend, Bill Medlin, to whom the book is dedicated.

It's a book that will appeal to both casual stargazers and hard-core enthusiasts.

Coming from Australia, precious little has been written about the night sky view of Aboriginal Australians. Therefore, it is great to see that in North America some effort has been made to address the lack of literature about the various indigenous views of the constellations. In Star Trails: Navajo by Don Childrey the author explains clearly how the Navajo Peoples viewed the nightly movement of stars overhead. I enjoyed the personal touch that Childrey adds to the book about his boyhood ponderings of the heavens and his clear respect for Navajo culture. Additionally, star maps that accompany the various stories and Childrey's great ability to make comparisons between how other cultures also see these regions of the night sky make for good light reading. Furthermore, for those that would like to have a view into how other cultures see the sky differently to the traditional 88 constellations used by astronomers today, this book offers a good insight into Navajo lore.

Since I live in a rural area, I use this as a reference book at night.