Tricksters. The Children of the Raven.

It's a week of stories about Raven, and since I wrote about Bill Reid yesterday, today I wanted to share this book by Martine Reid, who was Bill Reid's wife (they married in 1981) and, since his death in 1998, she has played a major role in curating his work. The book is Myths and Legends of the Haida Indians of the Northwest: The Children of the Raven.

The drawings from Haida art were done by Nancy Conkle, who is a coloring book artist, and the book is actually intended to be used as a coloring book, but with the texts of the stories too! For example, here is Raven (on the left), a Chief, and Bear. As you can see, each image has information about the provenance of the artwork too:

There are eight stories here, six of them about Raven: The Raven and the First People, The Flood, How Raven Got Fresh Water, The Raven and the Salmon, The Raven and the Ball of Light, How the Raven Lost His Bill, Nanasimgat and the Killer Whales, and The Bear Mother and Father. 

Here's you can see a pipe with Raven and Frog on a Human:

Of course if you want to color the images, you'll need to buy a copy of the book, and there are lots of used copies out there waiting to be colored. I really like the idea of a coloring book that has complete texts of the stories too, and I wish there were more coloring books like this one!

Myths and Legends of the Haida Indians of the Northwest:

The Children of the Raven
by Martine Reid