The Sasquatch The Fire And The Cedar Baskets

“Deep in the thickest part of a cedar forest there lived a young Sasquatch. He was over nine feet tall and his feet were about size twenty. He had long brown hair that covered all of his body. His hands were so big and his arms so long he could wrap them around the biggest of the cedar trees. He had been born here many years ago and he did not know his parents, as they had been scared away by a great fire. He was left on his own and he had survived by eating berries and he had grown into the Sasquatch he now was...” So begins this charming story for children by Kwantlen storyteller Joseph Dandurand. The Sasquatch, spirit of the great cedar forest, eludes human hunters, falls in love, fathers a lovely daughter and saves his little family from a forest fire by dousing the flames with water stored in baskets carefully woven by his mate. The story is told with grace and simplicity by a master storyteller in the great tradition of the Kwantlen people. Accompanied by whimsical illustrations from Kwakwaka’wakw artist Simon Daniel James, The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets follows a similar style to popular Nightwood titles such as Salmon Boy, Mayuk the Grizzly Bear and How the Robin Got Its Red Breast.

Dandurand’s work tackles complicated personal and social issues by drawing on his observations of the natural world. His voice is lyrical yet intimate, obscured yet sitting with you at the kitchen table having a cigarette. The East Side of It All is the journey of a broken man gifted with stories and poems who finally accepts his gift and shares with the world his hidden misery and joy: there was this woman that I fell in love with but she will never know who I am and I hide in the back of the room as she goes about her thing and I go about mine, and once I tried to look into her eyes but when she looked back, I knew she was a spirit and I was still a human and she passed right through me and I felt the coldness of her

Written and illustrated in the tradition of the Kwantlen people, Joseph Dandurand's second book is an endearing tale of two sisters and their connection with nature. In the water sat a sturgeon, born there, so they say, thousands of years ago, though the sturgeon themselves have been here for two hundred million years. It was at first a little egg, a big egg, born into the river. Now the sturgeon is back but how did it get here? How did the first sturgeon come to be? Earth and the river, moons and suns and clouds. Time, thousands of years and the Skwó:wech has seen it all. But what gift does the sturgeon have for us? So begins this second charming story for children by Kwantlen storyteller Joseph Dandurand. The sturgeon, spirit of the great river, eludes human fishers until two young sisters neglect to follow their mother’s instructions. What follows provides a moving exploration of the importance of sharing and kinship with all other living things. The story is told with grace and simplicity by a master storyteller in the great tradition of the Kwantlen people. Accompanied by Elinor Atkins’s illustrations, A Magical Sturgeon is a touching follow-up to Dandurand’s bestselling children’s book The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets.

A wonder-filled picture book inspired by the science of trees. With whimsical art and gentle text, Do Trees Have Mothers? translates scientific knowledge about the kinship structures of the forest into a beautiful and affirming story about how trees nurture the young. Discover all the ways in which a mother tree protects and nourishes the baby trees of the forest understory, and show young children what it means to care for a community, and for our environment and the earth. Did you know that mother trees help seedlings survive by transferring carbon and nitrogen through the mycorrhizal network? They can even warn baby trees when there are troublesome bugs about! Drawing from scientific research, Do Trees Have Mothers? is The Hidden Life of Trees (Greystone, 2016) and Finding the Mother Tree (Penguin Random House, 2021) for the preschool set. The perfect book for budding nature lovers, this book introduces the forest’s complex and fascinating wonders in a friendly and age-appropriate way.

Award-winning storyteller and poet Joseph Dandurand captures the delightful relationship between bears and the Kwantlen people in his fourth book for children ages 6-8. For a long time, the Kwantlen and the bears have lived side by side. When the master carver falls into the river, the bears rescue him. In thanks, the master carver gives the bears animal masks. But the bears don't know that these masks are magical. The Bears and the Magic Masks is the fourth in the Kwantlen Stories Then and Now series by award-winning author Joseph Dandurand, following The Girl Who Loved the Birds, A Magical Sturgeon and The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets.

A story for children by Kwantlen storyteller and award-winning poet Joseph Dandurand. The Girl Who Loved the Birds is the third in a series of Kwantlen legends by award-winning author Joseph Dandurand, following The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets and A Magical Sturgeon. Accompanied by beautiful watercolour illustrations by Kwantlen artist Elinor Atkins, this tender children’s story follows a young Kwantlen girl who shares her life with the birds of the island she calls home. Collecting piles of sticks and moss for the builders of nests, sharing meals with the eagles and owls, the girl forms a lifelong bond with her feathered friends, and soon they begin to return her kindness. Written with Dandurand’s familiar simplicity and grace, The Girl Who Loved the Birds is a striking story of kinship and connection.

Presents arguments for and against the existence of five notable cryptids and challenges the pseudoscience that furthers their legendary statuses, while providing an exploration of the nature and subculture of cryptozoology.