Totem Poles (All Aboard Reading) [Paperback]

Jennifer Frantz (Author), Allan Eitzen (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up | Series: All Aboard Reading

Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest pass on their legends and their history through totem poles. Children will discover many fascinating facts about these legendary "storytellers;" such as what the poles mean; and much more. The text is engaging and the beautiful illustrations have the look of woodcuts.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-Frantz takes on the daunting task of explaining the importance of totem poles to beginning readers. She is most successful when she describes how the poles are made and how they were raised traditionally. To her credit, she shows both historical and contemporary settings. Her description of the place of totem poles in Haida culture is necessarily oversimplified, and her attempt to cover everything in so few pages of limited-vocabulary text results in some sketchy information. She begins with the heading "The Pacific Northwest, 1750," which says very little to first and second graders. She describes a pole-raising event and writes that "People in costumes are dancing," but the woodcut illustrations show no one in costume or dancing until several pages later. Eitzen's art is striking but stylized so it is hard to hold it to accuracy. However, a double-page map that shows a segment of the Canadian-Alaskan coast with an inset that features an outline of northern North America is not going to serve the intended audience well. With no labels on these maps, it will be the rare child who will be able to figure out what is being depicted. Those who want to explore Northwest-coast cultures with a young audience may want to investigate adapting the activities in Nan McNutt's The Bentwood Box and The Button Blanket (both Sasquatch, 1997).

Sue Sherif, Fairbanks North Star Borough Public Library, AK

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 2-3. This interesting entry in the All Aboard Reading series is a good introduction to totem poles and their significance to the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. The book begins with an eighteenth-century totem pole raising ceremony. Then it offers more general information about the history of totem poles, the lives of the people who carved them, and the carving process, along with some intriguing legends surrounding the totem poles. Woodcut-style illustrations dabbed with color are a good, hardy choice for the art. A fine example of how much information can be conveyed in an easy-to-read nonfiction book. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0448424231
• ISBN-13: 978-0448424231
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,324,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Nice Little Book for a Very Young Audience, October 20, 2003

By 

Pooh Guy (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Totem Poles (All Aboard Reading) (Paperback)

This is a nice little book that is written for a VERY young audience. Although it claims to be for grades 1-3, it is, in my opinion, appropriate for grades K-1.

Each page has a nice watercolor drawing/painting, and from 1 to 3 sentences in fairly large type.

It has a limited vocabulary and simple sentence structure that would make it appropriate for the K-1 student who is using the book as a learn-to-read assignment. However, if you are reading it to them, I think most children above the age of 6 would feel insulted and/or bored if this was read aloud to them.

For example: "They hunted deer and bear. They used animal skins for clothes." And on another page: "Look at this totem pole. It belongs to the Eagle group. Do you see the eagle at the top?"

Of course, there are also some general sorts of inconsistencies that are noted in the industry review above, but these aren't really all that much of a problem. In my experience, most kids will just king of pass right by these sorts of things and don't really notice them and aren't bothered by them.

Overall, this is a good book for what it does. If you want a fairly low-level book for the K-1 crowd, then this book will work just fine.