Ahmek – A Children’s Book

Description

Patrick Watson

Ages 10+

In Canada we have a long tradition of realistic animal stories from
such well-known writers as Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Roderick
Haig-Brown. Ahmek, the Ojibway word for beaver, follows in that
tradition. Set in Algonquin Park in 1917, the story follows the
fortunes of a young beaver as he is forced out of his family lodge by
poachers, goes on his “wander year” to find his own territory, finds
a mate, builds a dam and lodge, and starts a family. Woven into the
natural cycle of the beaver’s life are encounters with humans, good
and bad. Painter Tom Thomson and several members of the Group
of Seven show how environmentally friendly humans behave in the
wilderness while some poachers show how others exploit it.
This is a novel rather than non-fiction, Ahmek and his family and
friends are developed as characters with distinct personalities. They
follow the Ojibwa in attributing the ground-shaking rumble of a train
to a Wendigo and asking Manitou for help in times of trouble.
The reader can empathize with the beavers. The writing style,
however, is uneven, with the usual straightforward, pleasing tone of
the narrative broken all too often by strained jarring imagery. For
example, the falling tree traps the poachers in their tent “like sausages
in vacuum-wrap in the supermarket, although, of course, vacuumwrapped
sausages would not be invented for another forty years.”