Hide and Sneak

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

This Inuit tale has clear didactic purposes: it warns children against
the dangers of playing hide-and-seek in the landscapes of the Far North
and teaches them how to recover their bearings if they do get lost.

An inuksugaq (a pile of stones in the shape of a human) serves as a
landmark by which children who have wandered too far afield can find
their way home. An ijiraq is “a hide-and-seek creature”: hard to see
and eager to help children who do not want to be seen when playing
hide-and-seek; but when an ijiraq helps children hide, they are never
seen again.

Dismissing her mother’s warnings, Allashua skips along with the
ijiraq to hide in a cave where none of her playmates could ever find
her. Through her own cleverness she escapes, and, thanks to an inuksugaq
just visible on the horizon, finds her way home.

No less important than the lessons of this story is Allashua’s
delight in nature. This is the note that Kusugak strikes in the end,
when he observes that Allashua, though still not very good at
hide-and-seek, “didn’t really mind” because “there were always
butterflies to chase and tiny bugs to look at.” This, the ultimate
point of Hide and Sneak, arises naturally from Krykorka’s
illustrations, which capture both the fascinating delicacy of cotton
grass and Arctic flora and the rich variety of tundra butterflies,
mammals, birds, and fish. The primitive art of the picture borders
suggests that the tale of Allashua has in its many features centuries of
precedents.