Eagle Drums
by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson; illus. by the author
Intermediate    Roaring Brook    256 pp.
9/23    9781250750655    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781250750662    $10.99

Hopson’s (Iñupiat) debut novel is the story of the origin of the Messenger Feast, an Iñupiat festival of song and dance. Piŋa follows in the footsteps of his two older brothers, both of whom died confronting a golden eagle. When he encounters the eagle, instead of attacking or freezing in fear, Piŋa accepts its challenge to learn what the Eagles can teach him. Piŋa brings his new understandings of song, drumming, dance, architecture, and community back to his family, to the animals who share their environment, and to the people whose stories sustain their culture. This retelling of a traditional tale benefits from Hopson’s personal connection to Alaska, where she was born and raised and where she and her family live. Set in the long-ago of oral tradition and accompanied by occasional colored-pencil and ink drawings, the tale evokes the tundra in all its seasons. Hopson deftly describes smells (the autumn earth, the “dusty rot” of the Eagle Mother), tastes (berries, roasted caribou meat, bitter Arctic hare fed on willow bark), and sounds (marmot whistles, bumblebees) that bring the land to life for the reader and ground this archetypal hero’s journey in the real world.

From the November/December 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.