From a distinguished editor and translator of Native American lore (most recently, Lightning Inside You, 1992), a simple but dramatically retold creation myth. Pushed by her jealous husband, a sky woman falls from the heavens to the watery void below, where she creates the earth, sun, and stars. When her two children, Sapling and Flint, are born, they create, respectively, the world's gentle and fearsome things, then rise into the heavens trailing the bifurcated Milky Way, ``showing that there are two minds in the universe''--benevolent and harsh. Parker's gouache paintings employ a remarkable range of tones from watery pastels to deep, intense shades; his frontispiece, a closeup of the flowering tree that illuminates the heavens, is dazzling. Most satisfying to look at, to read aloud, or to hear. (Folklore/Picture book. 5+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

K Up-- A man and a woman live on island in the sky, lit by a shining tree. When the woman hears her children speaking from within her, her jealous husband uproots the tree and pushes her through the hole. Her fall to the water below is cushioned by birds, and she lands on a turtle's back. After creating the earth, stars, and sun, the sky woman bears twin sons: Sapling, who is responsible for making plants, fish, rivers, and humans, and Flint, who puts tiny bones in the fish, makes snow and monsters, and causes the rivers to run one-way only. The brothers decide to leave Earth and, in choosing different paths, divide the Milky Way. Sky Woman also flies up, on the fire's smoke, telling the people that their thoughts also can rise. The final page contains their prayers of thanks. Bierhorst has done an extraordinary job of adapting anthropological sources of Six Nations lore. Parker's equally extraordinary watercolors provide a fitting complement. Intensely hued, soft-edged, flecked with light, these pictures are splendid but not fussy. Like creation itself, they have an unfinished quality. Delicate pen strokes suggest details and motion; faces are sketched rather than delineated. The combination of lapis blue and a flamelike red-orange makes for pages of incandescent loveliness. This exceptional book has an interest and appeal beyond its Native American subject matter. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The world comes to be when the sky woman is pushed from the sky people's floating island in the air by her husband. When the woman lands on the back of a mud-covered turtle, her power of creation causes the mud to grow into the Earth. Bierhorst has adapted this Iroquois story of creation from a variety of scholarly sources. Parker's paintings in gouache and pen and ink capture the amorphous moments of creation with beauty and dignity. From HORN BOOK 1993, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this story from the Six Nations, a husband ``in the sky country'' grows jealous of his wife's pregnancy and pushes her through a hole. She lands softly on the back of a turtle, and creates the land, the stars and the sun. She also gives birth to twins, Flint and Sapling, the first as hard as the other is gentle, who play a part in their mother's work--``Sapling . . . created fish. But Flint threw small bones into them, to make life more difficult . . . '' All three return to the sky, where people's thoughts can reach them in the smoke of their fires. This rather noncohesive rendition by Bierhorst, known for his retellings of American Indian stories for older readers, may prove confusing for younger audiences, as several loose ends are left dangling (albeit authentically so). Nevertheless, the story's discontinuities do not seriously detract from a gentle, sensible tale that explains both the rough and the smooth in our world, and significantly portrays a woman as creator. Parker's loosely modeled, intensely colored gouache and pastel illustrations echo the tale's primitive origins and continue this team's fruitful collaboration, also seen in The Monkey's Haircut and The Whistling Skeleton. Ages 5-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ages 5-9. "Before the world was new, sky people lived on a floating island high in the air." Then Sky Woman, pushed off the island by her jealous husband, creates the earth, sun, and stars. Her two sons, Flint and Sapling, help her bring plants, animals, and humans to life. The disparate personalities of the sons are reflected in their creations and are evidence of "the two minds of the universe, one that is hard like Flint, one that is gentle like Sapling." Full-color illustrations, rendered in gouache and pen-and-ink, fill the pages with strong images of the world coming to life. The narrative style and the concepts dealt with will be challenging for many young readers. To help children fully appreciate the beauty and imagery of the story, some introduction and discussion will be necessary. A list of original texts from which the tale was adapted is appended. (Reviewed Mar. 15, 1993)0688106803Karen Hutt