If You're Not from the Prairie

Kelly L. Green is the co-editor of the Children’s Literature edition
of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

David Bouchard’s poetry is lyrical and beautiful to the ear, and is
greatly enhanced by Henry Ripplinger’s realistic illustrations, so
evocative of prairie landscapes. The poem If You’re Not from the
Prairie is a powerful statement about the lifelong effects of growing up
in the midst of harsh, unforgiving, yet unspeakably beautiful terrain.

Unfortunately, the poem begins by excluding the vast majority of the
Canadian, not to mention the world’s, population: those who are not
from the prairie. I believe that young children hearing or reading this
book would feel very strongly that the author considers them and their
worlds inferior if they are not “from the prairie.” (I know I felt
this as an adult, and I am from the prairie.) Flat statements such as
“If you’re not from the prairie, / You don’t know the sun, / You
can’t know the sun” (repeated for pages with the substitutions of
“wind,” “sky,” “grass,” and “snow” for the word
“sun”) have no place in a children’s book, no matter how lovely
the poetry and the pictures.

This luminous paean to the prairie is, despite its beauty, bound to
offend anyone who is not from that region. Not a first-choice
purchase—if you’re not from the prairie.