A beautiful and visionary book, Ancient Thunder celebrates wild horses and the natural world of the prairies. Using an extraordinary technique, Leo Yerxa, an artist of Ojibway ancestry, makes paper look like leather, so that his illustrations seem to be painted on leather shirts. The art is accompanied by a rich song of praise for the wild horses that came to play such an important role in the lives of the First Peoples.

Years in the making, the book is truly a work of art — one that reflects Yerxa's sense of nature and the place of the First Peoples within it.

The horse paintings are pretty but the text about thundering horses is a bit pious and overwrought. ( )

Very unique presentation of the power of horses in the life and culture of native peoples. The illustrations are done in a beautiful and intriguing way that I have not seen in any other book. A simple read with a powerful underlying message. (Historical Fiction)

I enjoyed reading the book “Ancient Thunder” by Leo Yerxa. One aspect I liked about this book was the writing. In this book, it does not state that the book is about horses. The book calls them hooves of ancient thunder. The students have to look at the pictures to understand what the story is about. “Running again at daybreak, beating the earth drum, carrying man, on hooves of ancient thunder.” The book states all of things horses can do. Another aspect of this book that I liked was the illustrations. I liked the illustrations in the book because they were made up of many different patterns and shapes. The book is based off of the Native American culture, so throughout the book, the reader can see many aspects being related back to the Native American culture. The illustrations were brightly colored and kept the attention of the reader. The big idea of this story is to respect ones culture and the aspects that surround it. ( )

A poetic meditation on the horse, and its significance for the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, Leo Yerxa's Ancient Thunder was selected as the 2008 award winner by the First Nation Communities Read program of Ontario. The gorgeous color illustrations are created using handmade watercolor paper, specially treated and painted to resemble leather. Each two-page spread features a vaguely "Plains style" shirt, with horses running over and through it.

This lovely picture-book by Ojibway artist and author Leo Yerxa really doesn't have much of a story to it, and I have a hard time imagining that young children will be interested in the minimal text. The illustrations, on the other hand, are simply beautiful, and readers young and old will enjoy poring over them - I know I did. I also appreciated Yerxa's brief forward, in which he makes it very clear that his book is a tribute to another culture, offering young readers a subtle lesson about the great diversity to be found amongst the native peoples of North America. ( )