Old Turtle Book Review

Book Review

Title: Old Turtle
Author: Douglas Wood
Illustrator: Cheng-Khee Chee

Old Turtle won the ABBY Book of the Year Children's Book Award in 1993. This beautiful picture book is written in the style of an American Indian Creation Myth. The story begins in the long ago when all the animals, rocks, wind, stars, rivers, oceans, mountains, etc. in the world could speak and understand one another. The beings of the world begin to argue about God, each describing God as a reflection of themselves. When the argument has gone on for a long time, and grown louder and louder and louder, Old Turtle finally speaks. Old Turtle, tells the beings that they are all correct, because God is all these things they describe - God is deep, she tells the fishes in the sea, and much higher than high she tells the mountain, swift and free as the wind, in a word, God Is.

Then people come to the world; people, who in turtle's words are a "message of love from God to the earth." But when people forget this and begin to fight and kill each other and do things to that hurt the earth, it becomes up to the all the beings of the earth to remind people of the lesson that they had learned long ago from Old Turtle. The book ends on a note of hope with the people listening to the Earth, and beginning to "see God in one another and in the beauty of all the Earth."

Cheng-Khee Chee's beautiful watercolors perfectly complement the text. Highly Recommended.