Trickster. Coyote Stories for Children

For yesterday's blog post about trickster turtles, I actually shared two Hopi stories featuring Coyote, so I decided to dedicate this new week of trickster books to stories about Coyote, starting with this lovely book of stories by Susan Strauss: Coyote Stories for Children.

There are four stories here, all of them nicely told, along with a helpful introduction about some of the many meanings of Coyote in different Native American traditions. As Strauss explains, she has adapted the stories from stories recorded by anthropologists in the late 19th century. So, unlike the Hopi stories in yesterday's books, these are stories from books, not stories that are themselves part of a living Native storytelling tradition. With that in mind, I think the stories in this book can incite curiosity among readers to learn more about Coyote stories and traditions.

The illustrations are by Gary Lund, and you can find out more at his website. Here's an illustration from my favorite of the four stories: Coyote and the Grass People, a story told by the Assiniboin people, who call themselves Hohe Nakota ("Assiniboin" is an Ojibwe name).

Strauss and Lund also collaborated on this book of stories about wolves: Wolf Stories : Myths and True-life Tales From Around the World, and that book is also available at the Internet Archive; it contains six legends and four true-life tales:

So, both of these books are just a click away for your enjoyment, and I'll be back tomorrow with more coyote stories.

Coyote Stories for Children

by Susan Strauss