The Pond God and Other Stories

Oscar Wilde was once asked why he wrote stories for children (for example, The Happy Giant). His answer: "I no more write for children than I write for adults. Rather, I write for those who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness." So, too, writes Samuel Jay Keyser in The Pond God and Other Stories. The stories were inspired by a Navajo shaman who once said that he had seen a god walking across the horizon. Keyser is both humorous and profound as he explores the foibles and insights of the very human "gods" who inhabit his primordial world. The stories include How Clouds Came to Be," "How a Thief Stole the Horizon," and "How the Sun Tricked a God." Each reader of these 43 parables will bring a different perspective to the stories. Robert Shetterly, acclaimed for his illustration of William Blake's Proverbs of Heaven and Hell, captures and compounds the "subtle strangeness" of Keyser's tales in the simple, evocative line drawings for The Pond God.