“The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk,” by Jan Thornhill.
Groundwood Books, Toronto, 2016, 44 pages, Grades 2-4.
The earth’s ecology is a very intricate and complicated system. As the Old and New Testaments tell us, God has sanctioned human use of plant and animal life on earth. Because of this, humanity can harvest crops and kill animals for food.
Though some people today would have you believe that there is no difference between trees or dogs and human beings, there is and always will be a difference. People have immortal souls and were created by God to manage the earthly order.
Unfortunately, we also suffer from the effects of original sin which causes us to act selfishly at times. If we do not seek God’s guidance in this management of the things of the earth, many tragic things can happen. We can concretely see this in the thoughtless destruction of animal species. Jan Thornhill tells us this sad story in the fine book “The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk.”
The Great Auk, a shorebird, stood about 30 inches tall and weighed nearly 30 lbs. Living next to the islands in the North Atlantic, the Auks were outstanding swimmers. In fact, for about 10 months out of the year, they never came out of the water. Related to penguins, great auks had waterproof feathers and a layer of fat protecting them from the cold North Atlantic waters.
As ages passed, the wings of the Great Auk became shorter and the legs developed closer to the tail. This allowed great auks to become outstanding swimmers. Unfortunately, it made them wobble during the two-month mating season each year. Their relative inability to walk with any speed or agility made them easy prey for wolves and polar bears.
Indian tribes also hunted great auks for hundreds of years. But they could not kill enough to really change the population. With the arrival of whaling boats, this changed rapidly.
Hungry sailors, tired of the ships’ rock-hard bread known as “hardtack,” killed the great auks in massive numbers for meat, feathers and the rich yolks of the eggs. The slaughter was so great that the population became extinct in most places in the North Atlantic by the 1830s. The final rookery, or nesting place of great auks, was a rocky island off the coast of Iceland. However, a volcano erupted, burying the island and the few remaining great auks were killed by hunters.
Which leads us back to the questions raised in the opening of this review: What is the proper use of the animal and plant life given to people by God? What happens when people are greedy and short-sighted? How do we both respect nature and not give in to pantheism, or the worship of animals and plants? All of these are complicated questions. People in previous generations were no doubt ignorant of the implications of their actions on the environment. The development of our national park system and regional bird sanctuaries have been a positive response to the indiscriminate killing of animal species and wildlife.
While these are all beneficial steps, we must ultimately return to the answer to all of these questions. We must allow God to guide us. When we don’t do that, we arrive at the situation presented by Jan Thornhill in “The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk.”
This book has been nominated for many awards. The author takes a balanced view of what caused the extinction of the great auk. The illustrations are interesting and will keep the attention of readers. This book would be very helpful in a middle grade science class, or for adults reading the book with younger members of their family. Jan Thornhill has written an outstanding book. I hope you get the chance to use it in classroom settings or with members of your family.
