FernFolio

Ten year-old Eddie lives with his mother and grandparents in Haida Gwaii, known by non-Natives as the Queen Charlotte Islands, along the coast of British Columbia. With his best friend, Jake, Eddie hikes up to Spirit Lake, where they have built a raft, helps Jake’s mother gather berries and plants to make traditional medicines, digs for clams on the beach, and rides around on the old bike they found in the local dump. Though money is a constant worry for his family, particularly since his father left to find work on the mainland and has not been heard from in six months, Eddie loves his life in the small Haida community. He especially loves fishing with his grandfather.
Every morning, Eddie and his grandfather head out in their small boat to fish. Since his mom has turned their home into a bed and breakfast for tourists visiting Haida Gwaii, the family is no longer completely dependent upon their catch to put supper on the table, but Eddie looks forward to the daily ritual of motoring out to a good spot, dropping the anchor, and baiting the lines with octopus. Since his grandfather’s hands have grown shaky and he doesn’t have the strength he used to, more and more of the fishing has fallen to Eddie, and he feels proud everytime he hauls another fish into the boat.
Once they are settled into the day’s fishing, Eddie knows that he will hear another of grandfather’s stories, tales about Trotter, the black bear who got driven out of his den by loggers and about the trick grandfather played to scared the loggers away, and about the humpback whale who got blown into the mountains during a tidal wave. But Eddie’s favourite stories are about the Big Snapper, a gigantic and wily fish with whom his grandfather has tangled several times over the course of his life. The way grandfather tells it, the Big Snapper is big and strong and smart and protective of his family and not above playing the odd trick upon fishers who try to hook him.
When grandfather becomes too weak to fish, Eddie feels bereft. Though Jake and his brother-in-law, Fred, welcome him into their fishing boat, things are not the same without grandfather’s stories and, more importantly, his strong and gentle spirit.
The Big Snapper is a wonderful story about the importance of family, the strength of a community’s ties to their environment, and the power of story. This small book is a perfect example of good things coming in small packages. Katherine Holubitsky has written a book that young readers, and their parents and teachers, will remember long after the last pages are finished!
FernFolio Editor