Elias Martin

Review also includes:

The Selkie’s Mate, Nicola Davies, ill. Claire Jenkins, 978-1910862490

Both of these titles are part of the Shadows and Light series created by Nicola Davies in which she takes traditional folk or fairytales that allow her to explore our relationship with the natural world. Beautifully packaged by Graffeg, these are a very welcome addition to the bookshelves and should be made available side by side with the fiction sequence.

Elias Martin is, perhaps, the less familiar of the two tales presented here. A variation on the traditional story The Snow Child in which a couple are granted their desire for a child, only to lose her when summer comes. Here, Elias is a hunter; a man warped by his experiences, at war with the world around him. The arrival of a child – naked, abandoned – gives him a new focus but he still sees the natural world, the wolverine, as his adversary. Therein lies his tragedy.

Fran Shum’s bold line drawing capture the stark power of the story. There is no sentimentality here and Davies’ prose, though literary, echoes the voice of the storyteller. No moral is drawn – that is for the reader.

The Selkie’s Mate will be much more familiar to its audience. The tale of the fisherman who captures a seal maiden, then hides her skin to prevent her return to the sea is well known,  appearing in many anthologies and can be read in many different ways. Here Davies picks up her theme of the danger that lies in failing to work with the natural world; of imposing our will upon it and disregarding what should be a compact. The illustrations by Claire Jenkins echo the sea background through her use of clear watercolour wash, complementing the storyteller’s voice, capturing the shifting colours of the island landscape. Aimed at an older audience – top KS2/KS3 – these are powerful stories that have stood the test of time and still resonate today.