David Bouchard shares his intimate relationship with the environment in If you’re not from the prairie .. . “If you’re not from the prairie, You don’t know me. You just can’t know ME.” This book is an invitation to get to know a little about the author. He and illustrator, Henry Ripplinger, were born and raised on the prairie in Saskatchewan, Canada. The text, much of it in rhyme, and the realistic paintings that illustrate this childhood, describe “a particular beauty”.
This story could be read—maybe
correctly—with attitude. In an author’s note, Mr. Bouchard writes, “…I needed
to silence those who didn’t understand that we from the prairie are what we are
and who we are because of the cold, the wind, and the sun…Could anyone
understand what I was, without having shared my dust, my wind, and my blizzard?”
Perhaps it’s because so many people underestimate the extreme challenges and
joys of prairie life that David Bouchard wrote “If you don’t know the
prairie, you can’t know my soul. . .” Thank you, Mr. Bouchard and Mr.
Ripplinger, for sharing this life with those of us who don’t know the prairie—who
can’t know it.
This book is read aloud online by Shantil Wallace.
My Picture Book Talk for this story is here.
