An Inuit Origin Story - A Creative Retelling

In a funny and endearing retelling of a traditional Inuit story, The Walrus and the Caribou by Maika Harper and Marcus Cutler is a fun story with super cute illustrations.

The Walrus and the Caribou is a traditional Inuit origin story and many similar stories can be found among Inuit from Labrador to Alaska. Maika Harper’s retelling is really wonderful as it is filled with open ended questions to really get little readers thinking about how the world came to be. Reader’s will get a kick out of Marcus Cutler’s illustrations of the mixed up walrus and caribou, they will be giggling along to the story. The best part, at the end. Maika Harper leaves the readers with questions about what kind of animal they would create if they could will their intentions into being. Readers can have so much fun creating their own mixed up creatures.

You could also pair this story with The Wild Beast by Eric Walters and Susan Todd about how the Wildebeast was created. There are many lovely origin stories from different traditions that would be so much fun to explore together. Also important to note that the author includes Inuktitut words in the story and gives readers notes on the pronunciations as well as links to audio recordings of the language!

The illustrations by Marcus Cutler are simple in colour palette, blues and browns, but big on interest and appeal. Check out the end papers! So much fun!