Review of A Kayak Full of Ghosts
Retold by Lawrence Millman
Illustrated by Timothy White
Published 2004 by Interlink Books
ISBN Number: 1-56656-525-1
Approximate Reading Level: Not Recommended for Students

Lawrence Millman is a non-Native writer who happened to hear these stories while traveling in Greenland over several trips. He does not say much about his background, but it seems from his introduction that he has only spent a few months out of his life in the Arctic. He writes that he heard these stories from old Inuit men that he spent time with on hunting trips, when he was snowed in various places, and when he was in the hospital alongside a few other men. He also writes that he has "strived for readability rather than word-for-word accuracy,…spliced together two or more versions of the same story,….cut, polished, even recast." He writes that he wants the reader to feel the "same immediacy that they might have if [he/she] were listening to the storyteller himself on a cold Arctic night" (15). Millman lists most of the sources of the tales in the back of the book, though for a few of the tales he only has listed places where he "collected" them and not actual people's names. Nowhere does he write of asking permission from the storytellers to publish the stories.

These stories are all very unusual - I have never heard stories like them before. Most of them have to do with people experiencing supernatural forces in their environment, and many times those experiences are violent, odd, and borderline pornographic. Many of the stories seem like dirty, inside jokes that are told only in private company. The characters seem mysteriously motivated, but they do appear to feel emotions deeply and wildly, even though rarely rationally. The characters in the story seem to be acting on primal forces beyond our understanding, and they seem unwise and unlikable. Their speech and dialouge is not overly simple, but it is not filled out. While to an adult audience, the stories could possibly be entertaining, without the context, background, or explaination of why the stories exist or why/when they should be told, they do tend to capitalize on stereotypes and ugly generalizations that the western world holds about Arctic peoples.

Overall, I feel uncomfortable about this book. Not only do the stories seem very inappropriate for students due to the content, but they seem inappropriate for a western audience in general, as they do not do a good job of representing the Inuit people. I am aware that this book is in at least one school library in a rural Alaskan school, and so I wonder how prevalent it is in schools. I feel that students would feel embarassed or confused by this book. I do not recommend its use in school.

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