Dance on a Sealskin

Barbara Winslow, author of DANCE ON A SEALSKIN, has now turned from Alaska to rural Maine for inspiration. She taught school in Alaska and Maine for thirty-six years. Now retired, she and her husband live on an old farm.Teri Sloat is the author of THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A TROUT! and BERRY MAGIC, as well as the author and/or illustrator of many other books for children. A former teacher, she lives with her husband north of San Francisco. www.terisloat.com

“Young Annie formally joins her Yup'ik community by performing her first traditional dance during a gathering of the villagers, in a tale based on Winslow and Sloat’s experiences as teachers along the Yukon River and the Bering Sea.As Annie nervously watches other dancers and remembers her recently passed grandmother Olga’s instruction, readers will get a perceptive, unselfconscious look at how new and old commingle in modern potlatch; musicians pounding skin drums wear jeans and T-shirts, smiling faces sport eyeglasses, dancers in work shirts wave lovely fur and feather fans. The dances commemorate hunts, and in Sloat’s lively full-page and three-quarter-spread paintings the animals themselves seem to rise up and join the action. At last it’s Annie’s turn, and as she dances a walrus hunt on a silver sealskin (which she later gives to a baby for her “First Dance”), Olga’s figure silently joins the group. Afterward, Annie’s father offers everyone mittens, dishtowels, fish traps, ax handles, candy, gum, and akutaq (Eskimo ice cream). Potlatch customs may differ from place to place, as the authors properly point out in a prefatory note, but the feeling behind them is universal, and come through clearly here.”—Kirkus Reviews