The Shooting of Dan McGrew

From Publishers Weekly
The poem about the shooting of the fictitious Dan McGrew was written soon after the gold rush in Dawson City was over; it is an unrelenting story of the greed, jealousy, loneliness and betrayal that were characteristic of the Gold Rush era, and how Dan McGrew became the hated target of a half-crazed miner. While the action of the poem is intense and demanding, the painterly illustrations by Harrison are overwhelmingly powerful; they seem to take on a life of their own, drawing readers' attentions away from the text and toward the surrealistic interpretation of events. With ice-cold blues and violets, accented by vibrant reds and yellows, Harrison creates a pulsating world of hate and destruction; it's a fascinating interpretation of a well-known poem about the frustrations and splendors of the Canadian Gold Rush. Ages 8-up. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up Ballads have strong rhythms, and the texts of such epic tales as Dan McGrew (and Harrison's The Cremation of Sam McGee Greenwillow, 1987) are humane in their exposition of our heroic qualities and artful in the choice and composition of language. This poem is an anecdote from the days of the gold camps in Alaska. Service, writing in 1907, played up the melodrama using all of the props of a sort of Last Chance Saloon for his stage. Harrison employs opaque paints in relatively untextured areas frequently outlined thickly with contrasting color lines. There's a hint of Lautrec's posters at times. Saloon interiors provide sufficient details to draw readers in. And the impressionistic rainbow-like swirls of blues, purples, and yellows carry them through the boozy dream-cum-nightmares of a miner's psyche as he finds a return to ``civilization'' more than he can handle. The design in uncluttered: the pristine glossy white left-hand pages house the verses set in a large serifed typeface, and opposite are the black-framed pictures. Words and pictures make a strong pair. A plausible fantasy, attractive in its trim narrative setting. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, ColumbusCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Card catalog description
A narrative poem set in the Yukon describing the shoot-out in a saloon between a trapper and the man who stole his girl.


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Gr 6 Up Ballads have strong rhythms, and the texts of such epic tales as Dan McGrew (and Harrison's The Cremation of Sam McGee Greenwillow, 1987) are humane in their exposition of our heroic qualities and artful in the choice and composition of language. This poem is an anecdote from the days of the gold camps in Alaska. Service, writing in 1907, played up the melodrama using all of the props of a sort of Last Chance Saloon for his stage. Harrison employs opaque paints in relatively untextured areas frequently outlined thickly with contrasting color lines. There's a hint of Lautrec's posters at times. Saloon interiors provide sufficient details to draw readers in. And the impressionistic rainbow-like swirls of blues, purples, and yellows carry them through the boozy dream-cum-nightmares of a miner's psyche as he finds a return to ``civilization'' more than he can handle. The design in uncluttered: the pristine glossy white left-hand pages house the verses set in a large serifed typeface, and opposite are the black-framed pictures. Words and pictures make a strong pair. A plausible fantasy, attractive in its trim narrative setting. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, Columbus


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