Takannaaluk

A woman lives in the far north with her mother and father. For a long time she does not want to marry anyone. But one day a suitor comes in a kayak; the woman falls in love with him and gets into his kayak. When he gets out of the boat he has short, stubby legs. When he takes off his snow goggles he has red eyes. He is a kind of sea bird transformed into a man.

One day, the woman’s father wants to take her home. Her husband gets angry, and the sea bird makes wind to frighten the woman and her father and almost capsizes the kayak. The father throws his daughter out of the kayak. She falls into the ocean but holds onto the side of the boat. Her father cuts off her fingers and the fingers turn into sea animals.

This book is creepy because animals transform into humans. The drawings make the characters look very strange, like the husband with red eyes and short legs. The story is a legend from the Canadian Arctic about the mother of sea animals, sometimes called Takannaaluk. The book is written in English and in an Inuit language (Inuktitut) that has a completely different alphabet and looks cool.