Every night, frightening bears emerge from Kate’s closet. Then Kate’s Nana tells her how her ancestor, an early settler from Scotland, scared a bear away from her wilderness home while wearing skirts of the family tartan. Equipped by Nana with tartan nightgowns to wear and Gaelic words to shout, Kay rids herself of her own bears. Wild Cameron Women is a book about storytelling – about how family stories connect us to the wisdom of our ancestors, and about how storytellers like Kate’s Nana shape their tales to convey that wisdom to us.

The trouble with wise ancestors is simply that they know better than their descendants. Books about adults who know better than children aren’t likely to please kids, who tend to resent it when adults are right about everything. Fortunately, poet and short story writer Maureen Hull’s skilled telling of these events makes it possible for readers to suspect that Kate understands the imaginary status of what she fears, sees how her granny’s scheming is for her own good, and willingly plays along. The open-ended narrative (who’s tricking whom?) makes the book pleasurably complex.

The pictures, by Judith Christine Mills, illustrator of Jim McGugan’s Bridge 6, are equally complex. Their sophisticated pictorial dynamics are executed in a primitive folk art style that’s clever in a highly enjoyable way. Wild Cameron Women will please both adults who think it’s about adults manipulating children and children who think it’s about children manipulating adults.