This is such a cool picture book, which names of insects that are so much more descriptive than we have in English.

A housefly, for example, is a Wije’s which means “The one that follows you”

A dragonfly is a Sa’Qitie’j which means “The one that pushes through, as in an awl using through leather.

And a ladybug is a Puktewit which means “Little red ball of fire in the sky”

My all time favorite is Klmuej, the word for mosquito which is “The one that sings to you before she bites you”.

What a wonderful book to reintroduce the language back into the community, with common insects found around. As the book explains, the English language is a noun-based language but the Mi’kmaw language is verb-based.

But, despite how much I love this book, it could have been so much better. There could have been a CD so we could hear the words. There could have been more information on how to pronounce the words. And there could have been more background on the names of the insects.

Still, what is it that Samuel Johnson said about dogs walking on their hind legs. That you are so amazed that it is done, you don't critique how it is done. Although the actual quote is about women preaching, but we will ignore that part of the quote for now.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

An excessively niche book – but that doesn't stop it from doing what it wants to. In the Mi'kmaw language, everything is named somehow for how they behave, what colour they have, or what sounds they make. Their names for things like insects, then, can have many derivations, so a woodlouse almost gets the same name as the beaver, for they are both things that eat trees. A ladybird has the same name as a meteorite, for both are 'little red balls of fire in the sky'. This doesn't go further than adding to a few primary school libraries in the Mi'kmaw region, but it will cover the ground fully, and help inspire some familiarity and fondness for the language that only about 20,000 speak. I do think if we get a page guide to pronunciation, then a list of how everything should have been verbalised to conclude, they might have put that in place for each relevant entry, but there's little to quibble with elsewhere. The design provides good images of each critter, plus any animals or objects its name compares it to, and dramatises relevant scenes – such as the housefly, 'the one that follows you'. The appropriateness of that nomenclature proves you should pay attention to these guys; they know whereof they speak.

Oh, dear. What a disappointment this one was! It's such a shame when books like this aren't of great quality. The goal of promoting and preserving these languages is laudable. But when a non-fiction picture book is so chaotic, confusing, and unpleasant to look at, it kind of works against itself.

This is presumably for children, and yet it starts off with a wordy note explaining that, while English is a noun-based language, Mi'kmaw is a verb-based language. It then goes on to say that, if a Mi'kmaw word doesn't create a visual image, it is "contaminated or corrupt". This is ironic, considering that some of the words included in this book don't immediately create a visual image (at least, not in my mind).

The next thing we're treated to is one of the most confusing pronunciation guides I've ever seen, based on the Smith-Francis Orthography (which is probably not something that the audience for this book knows anything about). The very first letter is A, pronounced as in "amen". Now, I've heard that word pronounced as both AY-men and AH-men, so the pronunciation guide isn't off to a very good start. It just gets more confusing from there, as we're apparently supposed to be able to hear a difference between the O sound in "also" and "go", as well as subtle variations in the sound of letters like L, M, and N. It appears that we need a linguistics degree to read this book... and we haven't even gotten to the main part yet!

The bulk of the book is pictures of insects paired with Mi'kmaw words, their English equivalents, and definitions. I had no idea how to pronounce most of those words, and I wasn't about to flip back and forth to that pronunciation guide (especially on a digital ARC). But, guess what? You don't even need to. There's a pronunciation guide for all the words at the end of the book. Why those pronunciations weren't included on the actual pages with the words is beyond me; that seems like the logical place to put them.

Some of the Mi'kmaw words are very descriptive. Nismisqanaw is the word for "cocoon", and it means "comes from something that looks like dry skin". Other words, however, are much more vague. Mimikej is the word for "butterfly", and it simply means "the beautiful one". (That doesn't exactly create a visual image in my mind. Has that word been "contaminated"?) So it's a mixed bag. Then again, the book completely abandons the format on the page for spiders. So focused is it on telling us the singular and plural for the Mi'kmaw terms that it completely leaves out the definition! Awo'kejit means "spider"... but there's nothing to give me that visual image that's apparently so important.

The illustrations are pretty weak. There are credits for many of the images, so I'm not sure what the illustrators actually did here. The pictures are a combination of drawings and photographs, so there's no real cohesive look to the book. There's also a rather scary page that shows a woodlouse and a June bug depicted as the same size as a beaver!

The last few pages are taken up with blank pages for notes and sketches, an English/Mi'kmaw term matching game, and the pronunciation guide for all the words in the book (which, as I said before, really needed to be incorporated into the main text). Out of 40 pages, only 26 contain the actual illustrated Mi'kmaw words.

When I read a book that purports to teach an aspect of language to young readers, I expect that book to be clear, engaging, and fun to read. This book is, unfortunately, none of those things. I expect that it will have the most value for children who are actively learning the Mi'kmaw language, who will have someone who can help them with pronunciation and can, hopefully, tell them what awo'kejit actually means (I still don't know)!