So, when was it that I finished reading the ivory carver trilogy? I wrote about starting this trilogy a while back (when the moon was full) and I absolutely devoured it in full-tilt Outlander style. I remember wondering what to read after my Martian binge (“The Martian” and then Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”, which I read as a teenager and apparently remembered *nothing* of).

I started in on the first book in the ivory carver series (“Mother Earth, Father Sky”) because… 1) it is on the bookshelves at the moomincabin. 2) I knew that an eastern yooperland woman wrote it (which is probably why it’s at the moomincabin) and I very recently learned that she is the s-i-l of a North Country Trail friend. Mars to prehistoric Alaska? Somehow it worked for me. Kayaking (ikyaking) around to various beach communities is kinda right up my alley although my kayaking is just for fun and not a skill I need for survival.

I am a wee bit surprised that when I google the ivory carver trilogy, the info about it that shows up on the sidebar labels it a young adult series. As it turns out, when one of the beach urchins was about 13, she read the first book while we were at the moomincabin for a few weeks. She recently told me that she was a little surprised that she was “allowed” to read it then. When I finally read it, I understood why. Although it is not exactly what The Commander used to call a “potboiler”, there was sex and violence aplenty. Not to mention slavery.

Not sure if I can put my feelings about this into coherent words right now but… YA lit has evolved quite a bit since the Jurassic Age and I know that difficult topics are often included. This is apropos because a lot of teenagers experience sex and violence aplenty. And slavery.

I loved reading books to my children from the get-go and I did not shy away from children’s books that some people might think were a little iffy, like Gorky Rises. It’s kind of an LSD trip of a book – Frog mixes a magic potion that makes him float up into the air – but I chose to read it to my young children as a fantastic adventure. I certainly never prohibited my children from reading whatever book they wanted to read as children and nowadays I snag a lot of my books from their Goodreads posts.

Knowing this beach urchin, I am pretty sure she could handle the ivory carver trilogy at that age. I know I could have.

One of the “fun” characters in the ivory carver series is a combination of the Orange Baboon and Dr. Smith of the old Lost in Space TV series.

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