‘The Fairy Cat’ is the story of a magical cat. Photo: Amazon
Isla Skye is a teacher, herbalist and mother with a passion for sharing her love of the natural world and folklore. Her book “The Fairy Cat” is a charming children’s story that weaves together magic, friendship, and adventure in a delightful narrative. The story takes place in rural Ireland and centers around a young boy named Cianán who goes missing. Twenty years later, a black cat appears in a vegetable garden and helps a family recover their happiness.
The author’s writing is enchanting, capturing the whimsy and wonder of cats and their relationship to humans. The characters are endearing, particularly Ita and the magical wild cat. The author creates a vivid setting where the ordinary blends seamlessly with the extraordinary, inviting readers of all ages to believe in magic.
“The Fairy Cat” is a heartwarming story that celebrates the bonds of family, friendship ,and the power of belief. It is targeted for young readers up to 12 years but it’s a wonderful read for anyone who enjoys folk tales with a touch of enchantment and heart.
*The author was contacted for an honest review of this book. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
‘Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America’ by I.S. MacLaren explores the life, times, and challenging legacy of 19th Century Canadian artist Paul Kane. Photo: Amazon
McGill-Queen’s University Press announces the release of the four-volume publication “Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writings and Art, Life and Times” by I.S. MacLaren, the first comprehensive survey of Paul Kane’s (1810–1871) life and work in more than fifty years. Kane’s field sketches made between 1845 and 1848 constitute the first visual record of Indigenous life all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean by a Non-Indigenous artist. (Bow Bridge Communications, 2024)
Beginning his research three and one-half decades ago, MacLaren, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, provides a singular opportunity to examine the impacts of Kane’s travels in Indigenous North America through his writings, art, life, times, and complex legacy. A meticulous, panoramic examination, “Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America” also studies the artist’s legacy in terms of his contemporaries’, his technique, and the complicated history of the source of the works. The author examines Kane’s travels and output by focusing on four areas of study: history of the fur trade, book publishing history, art history, and ethnohistory.
Paul Kane, a portraitist based in Toronto, set out from the city in 1845 for Lake Huron and Wisconsin. From 1846 to 1848, he continued to the upper Great Lakes, the Prairies, across the Rockies, down the Columbia River, and through Oregon Territory to Puget Sound and Vancouver Island. MacLaren reconstructs the colonial processes that turned Kane’s unique descriptions and depictions of Indigenous peoples into benighted stereotypes, teaching contemporary readers valuable lessons about what we thought we knew about Kane and his art, how he let himself be turned into a detractor of Native Americans, and how society endowed him with authority that was not always warranted.
Kane has been called the founding father of Canadian art, and his “Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America” (1859) is considered a classic of Canadian literature, albeit a controversial one if viewed from a contemporary perspective. More recently, he has been vilified as having misrepresented and exploited his subjects.
“Paul Kane’s Travels” features reproductions of nearly all Kane’s sketches—many published for the first time—and many of his studio paintings, as well as transcriptions of his field writings. The writings, which show the artist to have been a curious traveler fascinated by Indigenous lifeways, contain no negative references to Indigenous people. MacLaren’s work also features a transcription of manuscripts not in Kane’s handwriting (by unknown scribes), the text of the first edition of “Wanderings of an Artist,” an updated catalog, and detailed maps of Kane’s routes. Through the author’s in-depth research, the publication offers scholarly and first-hand understandings of the lives and histories of the real people Kane described and depicted while providing an authoritative biographical portrait of the artist. Thanks to family descendants’ support, MacLaren has identified 26 Indigenous people depicted in the portraits.
Publication Specifications 2,408 pages, 9 x 12”, 4-volume set, full color throughout | Cloth 9780228017479 $450 CDN / $375 USD | Available for purchase here.
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