Sukaq and the Raven

Sukaq loves to drift off to sleep listening to his mother tell him stories. His favourite story is the tale of how a raven created the world. But this time, as his mother begins to tell the story and his eyelids become heavy, he is suddenly whisked away on the wings of the raven to ride along as the entire world is formed! This traditional legend from Inuit storyteller Roy Goose is brought to life through co-author Kerry McCluskey's jubilant retelling, and illustrated with photographs of Soyeon Kim's signature three-dimensional dioramas.

Roy Goose learned many of the legends he knows from his great-grandmother, Naimee Mammayuk, who left Alaska and came to Canada around 1910 with the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Steffansson. Roy passed his legends on to his children to teach them important life lessons and morals.

Kerry McCluskey has been working as a journalist and writer in the Arctic, telling the stories of the North since 1993. In 1999, she began travelling across the Arctic collecting stories, information, photographs, and artwork about ravens from Inuit, First Nations, and non-Aboriginal Northerners alike. Tulugaq, her first book, is the result of this research.

Soyeon Kim is a Korean-born artist and educator currently living in Toronto. She is a graduate of the Visual Arts and Education programs at York University and has participated in artist residences at the Hermitage (St. Petersburg, Russia), Spark Box Studios (Picton, Ontario) and the Toronto Public Library. She has illustrated a number of children's picture books, including Once Upon an Hour, You Are Stardust, Wild Ideas, Is This Panama?, Sukaq and the Raven, You Are Never Alone and A Last Goodbye. Soyeon won the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award in 2013.

• White Raven International Youth LibraryCommended 2018

"A creation story from the Indigenous people of Canada’s Northwest Territories is brought to life through the delicate illustrations of this bedtime story."—Foreword Reviews

“By telling an origin story with a little boy dreaming of accompanying the giant raven as it creates the universe brings the story from legend to something more personal and even bigger.”—CanLit for Little Canadians

"[T]his story is distinctly Inuit while remaining understandable to everyone which makes it extremely useful in classrooms and libraries... I highly recommend this book given how the illustrations and story combine to create a book that is pleasing to readers of many ages."—The Deakin Review of Children's Literature

Roy Goose learned many of the legends he knows from his great-grandmother, Naimee Mammayuk, who left Alaska and came to Canada around 1910 with the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Steffansson. Roy passed his legends on to his children to teach them important life lessons and morals.

Kerry McCluskey is a long-term resident of Iqaluit, Nunavut and has no plans to return to southern Canada. Kerry and her son River like spending time outdoors, at the rink, and in the kitchen.

Soyeon Kim is a Toronto-based illustrator, art educator, and artist, originally from South Korea. Her work specializes in merging fine sketching and painting techniques to produce three-dimensional dioramas. Kim is a graduate of York University and has illustrated several children’s picture books, including You Are Stardust, Is This Panama?, and Wild Ideas.