Once Upon a Time, Long, Long Ago

Terri L. Lyons is an elementary-school librarian, who also teaches in
the Distance Education Department and specializes in readers’ advisory
services at Mohawk College.

The author wrote this junior novel in response to his grandchildren’s
questions regarding the beginning of modern humans. Shykoff has created
a story of two young people in order to bring to life the world of the
Cro-Magnon peoples of 50,000 years ago.

Two children, Sim and Eevo, age 10 and 12, are separated from their
parents. Their life in the home cave has always been difficult because
Sim was born with a “club foot.” Traditionally, children born with
any perceived defects would have been exposed and left to die. Mother, a
member of a more progressive clan, had refused to leave Sim out to die.
But barely tolerated and without adult protection, Sim and Eevo leave
the cave to search for their missing parents. After a series of
adventures, they find a new cave and begin to set up a home for
themselves while they wait for better weather to search for Mother and
Father.

It is during their time in the cave that the story becomes difficult to
accept. The two children discover fire, learn how to make it, tame the
first wolf, develop new weapons, and teach some of their clan members to
tend fire and learn tolerance. Young readers will delight in the
never-ending adventures of Sim and Eevo but not in the heavy-handed plot
devices. Not recommended.