PUEBLO STORYTELLER
by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith & photographed by Lawrence Migdale
Like this team's Totem Pole (1990), a portrait of one Native American family, especially as related to a traditional art-form. April, ten, lives with her grandparents in the Cochiti Pueblo near Santa Fe. Her grandmother makes bread in a traditional outdoor oven; both she and her grandfather make the charming Pueblo Storyteller dolls: painted pottery figures with laps full of young listeners. Clear color photos show this creative process, step by step; the book concludes with a typical ceremony, a Pueblo legend, and some comments about the place of storytelling in Pueblo culture. This is a wholly positive picture; April's family has a modern kitchen and seems to live in comfortable circumstances. Her mother, to whom the book is dedicated, died in 1983; her father is only mentioned as being present when she was a baby. Not a full picture of Pueblo life, but an excellent presentation of one interesting component. Glossary; index. (Nonfiction. 6-11)