PAUL BUNYAN

The Paul Bunyan tall tale gets felled.

In the winter of 1914, a steam locomotive chugs along through Minnesota until an accident halts the journey. The passengers—diverse in skin tone—exit the train and gather around a fire. Soon, stories start flowing to pass the time—tales of larger-than-life strong men Joe Mufferaw, Otto Walta, and George Knox. But these “small fry” are nothing compared to Paul Bunyan, who a timber advertising executive alleges “shaped this land himself.” As the details about Bunyan get more and more outlandish, some listeners cry “malarkey.” Others remain rapt. As the tracks are cleared and the crowds die down, a few passengers confront the executive with the truth: The timber industry’s success comes at the cost of land stolen from Native Nations, and the Bunyan legend was a carefully constructed marketing ploy to justify the razing of trees. The introduction and backmatter delve more deeply into the myth and include multiple contemporary Native perspectives; young people are urged to “acknowledge…those who actually were living on that land,” and a map charts villages, burial mounds, and sacred sites of the Mdewakanton Dakota. Readers will come away ready to question what other falsehoods they’ve been fed about the history of marginalized people. Full-color illustrations effectively use smoke cloud panel borders to delineate the tall tales. A heightened sense of scale makes Bunyan practically leap off the page in grandeur.

An accessible and important reminder of how easily the truth can be co-opted.