TOOLMAKER

by Jill Paton Walsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 1974

What begins as a promising experiment in division of labor, when Yul and then other hunters in their prehistoric tribe ask young Ra to make their tools for them in return for a share of the kill, turns to disaster for Ra when the hunting is poor and there is nothing left over to share. By then Ra has forgotten his hunting skills and after he bungles a couple of kills the tribe moves on quietly one morning before he is awake. Wandering from the forest Ra comes to a valley where several more advanced agricultural tribes live in villages and have a need for tools the like of which Ra has never seen. Motivated by a craftsman's pride and the ""trembling"" excrement of creation, Ra settles near the villages and makes the new tools in return for enough riches -- skins, food, goat, etc. -- to buy him a wife in his old tribe. And indeed when Yul and others come hungry and begging to his camp it is Mi, the girl who secretly left him a fish the morning the others left him to die, that he demands in exchange for food. Mi is pleased with the beads and tools Ra gives her and ""proud of herself because her price was good"" -- proving perhaps that the more things change the more they stay the same. Jill Paton Walsh invests the scenario with an air of sobriety that is matched by the slim book's design and Jeroo Roy's tissue-like gray illustrations.

Pub Date: April 22, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Seabury

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION