Posted on by TracyC

When Clay Sings

When Clay Sings by Byrd Baylor, illustrated by Tom Bahti, 1972.

This children’s picture book is a salute to the ancient makers of Native American pottery, dedicated to these makers and the museums that preserve their work. It’s written as free form poetry with images of the American Southwest and designs from Native American pottery.

The story sets the scene on a desert hillside, where pieces of ancient pottery are buried. Sometimes, Indian (Native American) children dig up pieces of old pottery, and their parents remind them to be respectful of what they find because they are pieces of the past and of lives that went before. Sometimes, they’re lucky enough to find pieces that fit together or even a bowl that isn’t broken.

They reflect on the time and skill that went into making the pottery and how strong the pottery would have to be to last well beyond the lives of the people who made it. They think about the people who painted the beautiful designs on the pots and what their lives were like. Could their own children have requested favorite pictures painted on their bowls?

Some designs show animals or bugs or hunters, but others show bizarre creatures that might be monsters or spirits. Others show a medicine man trying to cure a child, ceremonies, dancers in masks and costumes, or the traditional flute player. People can reflect on the lives of those long-ago people and how they compare to the lives of people today.

There is a map in the back of the book which shows the areas of the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado) where the pottery designs the book uses originated from and the tribes that used them.

This is a Caldecott Honor Book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I grew up in Arizona, and I remember our school librarian reading books by Byrd Baylor to us in elementary school during the late 1980s or early 1990s. She wanted to introduce us to this author because she wrote about the area of the United States where we lived. In fact, this book about pottery was fitting because, when they were building our school in the 1970s, they found some ancient pottery. They used to have it on display in the school library. Even to this day, it’s common for people creating buildings in this area to have the site surveyed by archaeologists. Finds are fairly common, and the usual procedure is to thoroughly document everything that gets uncovered before burying it again in the same location and constructing the building over it. One of the reason why they usually rebury finds is that, in this dry, desert climate, putting them back into the ground will actually preserve them very well. It’s possible that later generations will find them again (especially with the location documented) when the building is gone or no longer necessary, but they may have better instruments or techniques for analyzing them.

I’m a little divided on how much I like this book, though. On the one hand, I like books about folklore and traditional crafts, and this book focuses on a geographical area that’s very familiar to me. On the other hand, the free verse poetry that reflects on the feelings of people about the pottery doesn’t appeal to me quite as much as books which show the process of making it, like The Little Indian Pottery Maker. I like to see the process and learn more of the known background legends of some of the designs than just try to imagine what things might have been going through the minds of the designers. Toward the end of the book, they show the legendary humpbacked flute player, but they don’t tell you that this figure is called Kokopelli and that there are legends about him. It’s a nice book, but I just felt like there was potential to include more background information.

This book uses the word “Indian” for “Native American” or “America Indian”, which is common in older children’s books.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Little Indian Pottery Maker

PotteryMaker

The Little Indian Pottery Maker by Ann Nolan Clark and illustrated by Don Perceval, 1955.

By “Indian,” the author means Native American.  This book specifically focuses on the Pueblo Indians who live in the Southwestern United States, specifically New Mexico and Arizona.  The story is about a young girl who is starting to learn the traditional art of pottery-making, and the book goes into the process involved in making pottery, step by step.   Although the use of “Indian” instead of Native American is somewhat anitquated, the book has something of an interesting history and the picture it provides of the practice of traditional crafts is fascinating. The beginning of the book explains a little about Pueblo Indians, their history, and where they live.

PotteryMakerGettingClay

The young girl tells the story of how her mother introduces her to the traditional craft of making pottery and teaches her how to make her first pot.  She describes every step in the process, from when they collect the clay themselves from a hillside until the pot is finally complete.

PotteryMakerMixingClay

The girl’s mother explains about the different methods used to make pots, and pictures show how pots are shaped.

PotteryMakerRollingClay
PotteryMakerMakingPots

Making pottery is a long process that takes days to complete, including shaping, scraping and smoothing the sides, drying, decorating, and finally firing the pottery.  The girl is proud of the first pot she has ever made.

PotteryMakerFiringPots

I found this book at a thrift store a number of years ago and recognized it because I already owned a related book, The Little Indian Basket Maker, that I liked when I was a young child.  I hadn’t realized then just how old the books were and that there were more of them by the same author.

The book, which was written in the mid-1950s, was one of a group of stories (not exactly a series because they didn’t have a specific set of characters in common and the themes varied somewhat) written by a woman who was a teacher with the United States Indian Service.  The other books that she wrote, including The Little Indian Basket Maker, focus on members of different Native American tribes.  She was not Native American herself, and the modern view of Indian schools is not favorable (for good reasons), so one might be a little suspicious of a book written about Native Americans by an Indian school teacher. However, these books interest me because of their explanation of traditional crafts. There are no white people in the stories at all, and they have a timeless quality to them.  Reading them, it’s hard to get a sense of exactly when the stories take place because it’s never mentioned, and there aren’t many clues (no mentions of modern technology, it’s all about the crafts).  I haven’t found any of the other books that the author wrote, but these two are very respectful in their tone, and they begin with explanations of the history of the tribes involved in the stories.  According to Andie Peterson in A Second Look: Native Americans in Children’s Books, the author was deliberately trying to write books that her Native American students could relate to.

The art style of the books vary because they had different illustrators.  The illustrator for this particular book was not Native American (unlike some of the illustrators of other books), but he was adopted into a Hopi tribe, apparently as an adult because of his accomplishments in representing Hopi culture in art.