Rabbit and Opossum come to life in 'Ancient Night' — a new twist on an old legend
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
At the start of things, the elders say, the universe was hushed and still. The moon alone shone bright and round in the star-speckled dark of the sky. So begins "Ancient Night." It's David Alvarez's twist on traditional stories from Mesoamerica and the focus today of our series on children's books, Picture This. The Mexican illustrator came up with the idea for "Ancient Night" after a trip to Spain a decade ago.
DAVID ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) It was a culture shock for me being there, seeing the cities and all their culture. After my visit, when I returned to Mexico, I had another culture shock when I started noticing so many similarities between both places. That's when I saw the need for this project.
SIMON: David Alvarez, speaking through an interpreter, says he wanted to know the history of Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquest. So we started doing research.
ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) That was how I naturally came across many myths. And there was one particular book called "El conejo en la cara de la luna" from a prominent Mexican historian named Alfredo Lopez Austin.
SIMON: "The Rabbit In The Face Of The Moon." People in Mesoamerica believe different stories about how rabbit tracks ended up on the moon. Some claim a rabbit was hurled there to lessen the moon's glow. In other tales, the rabbit is the caretaker of the moon, or the rabbit is a child of the moon who runs away and has to be returned by the sun.
ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) It was from that myth that I started looking for more information on mythology. I found out about the relationship between animals and the symbolic actions that are attributed to them. It was from there that I began to develop the version closest to the book because it's not like the book is a representation of a single myth.
SIMON: Instead, it's several, including the myth of Lord Opossum, who was said to have ruled the Earth in time before humans lived in cities. David Alvarez realized that he could use animals as metaphors to illustrate a story about human nature rooted in the legends of Indigenous people. His illustrations were published first as a wordless story.
DAVID BOLLES: The plot of the book is that there is a rabbit, and she is the guardian of the moon. She takes care to fill it every evening with a brilliant sap from the holy agave plant.
SIMON: That's author David Bolles, who, earlier this year, wrote the text for "Ancient Night," giving voice to David Alvarez's story about Rabbit and Opossum.
BOLLES: It's a solemn task, and she's very serious about her job. She has a less-serious kind of rival in the world who is Opossum, and Opossum becomes jealous. He doesn't think it's fair that Rabbit should get to have complete control over what happens with that sap. And so he cracks open the moon with his little walking stick and lets it drain out into a jug that he puts down on the Earth. And then he drinks it all.
SIMON: The world falls into darkness. David Alvarez illustrated "Ancient Night" with oil and acrylic. It was his first time using color in his art.
ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) At first, the drafts were only in black and white. But every now and then, I felt the need to include color because, in my research, I came across a lot of Mexican paintings, especially after 1940 - Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros - all of that prominent school of painting. I feel like that influenced me a lot.
SIMON: The sky is deep and dark. For much of the book, the only light is the bright orb of the moon casting beams of light on the Earth below.
BOLLES: The artwork is so vivid, so bright, so one of a kind that I think it's really fascinating to see how those, like, deep reds and greens, the plant life - it's a difficult thing to do. You know, David has managed to - in the darkness, to keep color alive.
SIMON: David Bolles had studied Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs, and he already had experience retelling and retranslating Indigenous stories when he was asked to work on this book.
BOLLES: I said yes before I actually thought about what that meant because taking a wordless text and translating it into English means creating the text for the first time in English. You're translating the intent of the author, and David had written up what he was trying to accomplish over image and what the basic plot of the book was. I had translated and retold the stories separately a couple of times. But it was just ingenious, the impact that interweaving them had on me. I felt like you can imagine a version of these stories that existed before humans were telling stories, back when animals spoke and ruled the world and that this is that version and that the versions we have today are just, you know, like a game of telephone. We've been retelling them again and again down the years, and they have changed.
SIMON: In the story, Rabbit confronts Opossum. David Bolles writes, (reading) Rabbit cried out, now no heavenly light can shine upon the Earth.
BOLLES: It's at that point that Opossum realizes that his jealousy has caused real harm to other people, and he's got to come up with a solution.
SIMON: Opossum lives underground where the gods have been preparing the other light that's going to be in the sky - the sun. He steals the sun, but it costs him the fur from the tip of his tail. Opossum and Rabbit become friends from then on. They're both stewards of the light.
BOLLES: So it's just, like, a really lovely story about rivalry and jealousy and how you can repair damage that you've done and is opening the door to young Mexican Americans and Mexican kids about, you know, this world that both David and I as adults had to suddenly grapple with the fact that we'd been missing out on. Even though I grew up on the border with Mexico in a Mexican American family, it wasn't until adulthood that I discovered these things.
(Speaking Spanish), David?
ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) No, not really. I did not have a relationship with mythology in my childhood. In fact, with hindsight, I feel like I was disconnected from ancient cultures. I like them and could identify them, but I never really studied them or acquired knowledge about them and their traditions.
BOLLES: His experience, you know, of growing up in a family that even though it has Indigenous heritage is disconnected from it is one that I think a lot of Mexicans and Mexican Americans share. So I'm thankful that - to be able to work on a project like this that opens those doors a little more. And it's lovely to think of - you know, despite conquest and colonialism and all these other things, that these stories and this language persists into the present. And it's heartening. It gives me hope that all the good things about being human beings can endure and that goodness has endured and that we'll be OK.
SIMON: That was author David Bolles and illustrator David Alvarez talking about their picture book, "Ancient Night." Our series, Picture This, was produced by Samantha Balaban with translation help from Fernando Narro.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAYNS' "LIVE WITH THE MOON")
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