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By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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Unfortunately, it is still an unusual treat to find two picture books based on the same Native American legend.

How coincidental and exciting, then, it is to discover two very different but equally valuable artistic treatments of a little known Ojibwe creation myth for the lady's slipper (cypripedium reginae), a rare orchid-like flower that grows in the Northern woods.

Authors Lise Lunge-Larsen and Margi Preus and illustrator Andrea Arroyo got their version to press first with The Legend of the Lady Slipper: An Ojibwe Tale (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999). Author Kathy-jo Wargin and illustrator Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen waited a couple years to add The Legend of the Lady's Slipper (Sleeping Bear Press, 2001), to their popular Legends series.

I have long been intrigued by the lady's slipper, mainly because I have only seen it on post cards I bought during childhood vacations in Minnesota where it is the state flower.

Lunge-Larsen and Preus confirm the scarcity of the shy and sensitive blossom.

"This delicate plant grows from the soggy ground of a black spruce bog or the rocky soil of a jack pine forest. It takes 14 years before the first bloom appears. If left undisturbed it will grow into a thick cluster of flowers which will bloom for another hundred years or more. However, if any part of the lady slipper is picked, the entire plant dies."

In an age in which virtually nothing is left undisturbed, it sounds like this flower, at least in its natural habitat, is doomed to extinction. Thank heavens the Ojibwe had the foresight to preserve the lady's slipper in a myth that explains how it got its name, and that we can admire its exquisite beauty in the illustrations of these two retellings of that myth.

"A legend," as Wargin explains, "is a piece of folklore, which means it is a story that belongs to everyone. Each time a story such as this is retold by a different storyteller, it becomes a unique version of folklore belonging to that individual person."

Wargin undoubtedly makes that statement not just to explain what a legend is, but to justify the production of a second picture book based on the same legend within a relatively short span of time.

Indeed, both books tell the same basic story with few variations. But the styles in which they present that story are miles apart. Each is a "unique version" which merits separate publication.

Some readers will content themselves with the quiet operetta-like telling provided by Lunge-Larsen, Preus and Arroyo. Others will prefer Wargin and Frankenhuyzen's grand-scale opera. My critical eye is stimulated by both.

So just why did the Ojibwe name this plant the "lady's slipper" or "moccasin flower"?

These books attribute it to the heroism of a young Ojibwe girl who saved her village from potentially fatal illness by running through the woods to and from another village on a cold winter's night to get medicine. The flowers, resembling her moccasins, appeared in the woods afterwards in honor of her extraordinary courage.

Each variation is suspenseful, but only Wargin dares to move her targeted audience (elementary school age children) to tears. As in all the other Legends books, one thing must die in order for another thing to be created. In this case, the heroine must die so that her soul can be reborn in the form of the lady's slipper.

Lunge-Larsen and Preus' protagonist loses only her moccasins during the course of her dangerous flight. Naturally, she is extremely ill as a result of her exertions, but she recovers by spring in plenty of time to see the first blossoms of the new flower her good deed inspired.

Wargin's telling is more authentic. Yet, many parents with good reason would probably prefer their children be exposed to Lunge-Larsen and Preus' decidedly more cheerful take on the tale.

In terms of writing style, I am torn between the two books. Lunge-Larsen and Preus hold their readers' interest with clean, simple sentences but fail to elicit any strong emotions. On the other hand, many of the children who read this book may not be ready for anything more than these authors' simple logic.

Wargin does a much better job with characterization, actually giving names to her heroine and heroine's family. "The little girl" in the other book must wait until the final page to earn hers.

Wargin's poetic word pictures are likely to achieve a much greater emotional response from her readers. However, she lays it on a bit thick towards the end, allowing herself to become too sentimental over the death of her heroine.

(I have a clear vision of little people squirming in their seats by the time they have heard the last refrain about Running Flower's smile.)

As far as illustrations go, Arroyo's soft water colors do ample justice to her collaborators' narrative, but Frankenhuyzen's dramatic oil paintings are the best feature of both books put together.

Mirroring the style of her collaborators, Arroyo's pictures are made up of well-defined lines and colors. Her lady's slippers look as though they have been painstakingly embroidered. But her characters' facial expressions are always neutral.

Frankenhuyzen not only tells Wargin's story but works in a few quirky asides of his own in his larger-than-life canvasses. He effortlessly matches Wargin's emotional intensity with an impressionistic blend of brilliant blues, bright yellows, fiery oranges, woody greens and dusky pinks.

He uses real-life models to produce characters that are so life-like that you expect them to walk off the page. The entire range of their feelings is expressed on their faces as well as in Wargin's prose. They move and cast shadows just as we do.

Likewise, Frankenhuyzen does a much better job than Arroyo of portraying his heroine's determination and urgency as she races fleetly over the snow to a neighboring village in the moonlight and of the conditions she endures as she does so.

Unlike his collaborator, Frankenhuyzen succeeds in communicating the legend's theme of inevitable loss and renewal of life without syrupy sentimentality. In fact, if you look carefully at all of his paintings you will find an occasional detail that is obviously meant to momentarily distract you from the story's somber tone.

For instance, I detected as decoration on one character's clothing a barely detectable bear, turtle and loon representing, of course, the previous entries in the Legend series also published by Sleeping Bear Press: The Legend of Sleeping Bear(1998), The Legend of Mackinac Island (1999) and The Legend of the Loon (2000).

Sadly, you will not find rivals in the marketplace for any of those titles. A bibliography I received last year, after attending a conference on the subject, shows that politically correct children's books on Native Americans and their folk lore are almost as difficult to find as the lady's slipper itself.

In picture book format, we are lucky enough to find one culturally inoffensive telling of an Ojibwe legend much less two.

I leave it to you to read between the lines of these books to determine the legend's relevance to our own society.

(Do the words "national health care crisis," spring to mind?)

I am just happy that, as should be the case with all folk lore regardless of its origin, the legend of the lady's slipper will be handed down to future generations from at least two distinctive points-of-view.

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She is the children's librarian at the Genesee District Library's McFarlen Branch.

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