EYR THE HUNTER

Book excerpt: "Travel back 12,000 years and learn of Eyr, a youngster who saved his tribe from a woolly mammoth as they traveled from Siberia to Alaska . . . well told in metered verse that flows smoothly throughout...Realistic sketches in burnished colored pencil show details of clothing, family life, and geography." --Children's Literature In this tale, a young Ice-Age boy plays a key role in the survival of his band more than twelve thousand years ago. Eyr ­s band is hungry and in need of new skins. The old seer predicts a coming snow, and without a good supply ofmeat, the band may starve or die of cold. Eyr walks over meadows and hills with the other hunters looking for tracks, but they return with little game. That night Eyr dreams of killing the great woolly mammoth with his sharp spear. He imagines how his band would dance and feast, with food to last them through the dark winter. The next morning the band­s hunter-leader wakes him. Having reached the age that he can hunt alone, Eyr is sent to scout the large beaststhat roam the tundra, especially the woolly mammoths. Taking only his cape, his knife, his spear, and a smoldering ember, Eyr sets out to become a man and save his band.Told in rhyming couplets, just as many ancient storytellers told the epic tales of the past, Eyr the Hunter: A Story of Ice-Age America is based upon many facts. Margaret Zehmer Searcy is a cultural anthropologist who has taught classes about Native Americans and their customs for more than two decades in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama. She has visited archaeological sites and is familiar with the kinds of animals that existed in the Ice-Age landscape. Joyce Haynes has won numerous local, state, and national awards for her illustrations. She has illustrated more than a dozen books and is the author of Drawing Wild Animals . She lives in Southwest Missouri.A story both involving and entertaining, Eyr the Hunter: A Story of Ice-Age America is made all the more moving by its wonderful rhythms and use of vivid detail. A children­s book that can be likened to the Clan of the Cave Bear series, this book can also be useful for explaining how the earliest Americans led their lives. It is a wonderful tie-in to any discussion about native cultures around the world as well.