Encounter

 Encounter

• author: Jane Yolen  http://janeyolen.com/
• illustrator: David Shannon  "no author website"
•  medium:  acrylic

• year of publication: 1992
• publisher city: San Diego, CA & New York, NY
• publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers
• ISBN: 0-15-225962-7

Annotation: A Taino boy dreams of scary sharp-toothed birds arriving on ships.  The next day, the first Europeans arrive on American shores.  The boy warns his people not to trust the pale visitors, but no one listens.

Personal thoughts:  The story told from the perspective of the indigenous people of the Americas puts a different spin on the classic tale of New World discovery.  The whites are described as non humans who cover themselves in colored cloths like parrots and cover their feet and don't act like people from this world.  While the Taino give the explorers important tools like spears to hunt and fish with, the whites give the indians bells and beads, and hats, that are of little use. There is an overall feeling of pessimism and doom in the story that is unsettling.  I wish Yolen would have showed what life was like before the Spanish arrived.  Instead we begin with a dark premonition and are left only to anticipate a tragic ending.  Shannon's paintings are beautiful but seem sparse in contrast to all that is going on in the text. On a positive note, Encounter would be a great resource for a discussion on different perspectives on the founding of the New World.  

***Use of alliteration - "three great-winged birds with voices like thunder rode wild waves in our bay."

*** Use of onomatopoeia - "they gave hollow shells with tongues that sang chinga-chunga."

***Curriculum connection - 5th grade US History