Home

What's New?
Raven's Prey

Current Titles
Raven's Prey
Battling Against
Success
Caught in the
Sluice
The Birthday
Party
Bucket
Keep the Round
Side Down

Our Authors
Ann Chandonnet
Neil Davis
Eric Forrer
Tim Jones
Slim Randles

Our Artists
Alice Cook
Kathy Fiedler
Eloise Forrer
Susan Ogle

Ordering
From Us
Bookstores

About M & B

Books from the north: well-written fiction by Alaskan authors, published by an Alaskan press.

Bucket
by Eric Forrer
illustrated by Eloise Forrer
All ages

$15.00, cloth
ISBN 0-9632596-0-1

Bucket the cat was a reincarnated pirate. He lived with Ellie Kulikan, who owned a boarding house at the end of a dock in a fishing village where old men with floppy hats told tales of such inventiveness that they became the truth and were passed down to the local children as the history of the town. One day the cool, dreamlike sea turns dangerous, and an adventure falls into the life of Bucket and Ellie and their woodchopper friend Olaf. Lost, the three find shelter in a magical place where Bucket had been once before, two hundred and forty-seven years ago, but he can't quite remember its nameSBeautifully illustrated by his artist/teacher mother, Forrer's poetic tale of gentle mystery and wry humor reflects his own diverse career on the water, in boat-building, commercial fishing, writing, and ocean freight.

What reviewers have to say about Bucket:

This is a tale parents won't mind reading again and again...Eric Forrer's writing is as rich as an old-time fairy tale, even when he's describing fishermen who play cards and drink too much home brew. Phrases like "turning the waves into tumultuous walls of light" and "she threw insults at them like rocks" are just marvelous. Eloise Forrer's unique, whimsical illustrations were done with colored carbon paper and an iron. The effect is something like woodblock printing, textured and lovely. Refreshingly, the book has no moral or lesson, except that sometimes you should let a story just take you away.

-Donna Freedman, Alaska magazine

Although Bucket seems to be a picture book, it is really a sophisticated romance. The heavy satiny pages are pleasing, but it is the illustrations made with colored carbon paper and a household iron which keeps one studying each page. The bright, simple shapes are amazingly realistic, especially when texture is created with rubbings of leaves. This book has a strong Alaska flavor...it could take place almost anywhere along the Alaskan coast, wherever halibut is fished. This is a very special book that should be seen and read.

-Sandra Strandtmann, Newspoke Alaska Library Network News

McRoy & Blackburn, Publishers
mbe@mosquitonet.com
Last modified 9 March 1999