Initial Thoughts about Helen Frost's SALT: A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP IN A TIME OF WAR

Helen Frost's newest book, Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War is getting a lot of good press, but I'm having trouble articulating what it is that doesn't work for me as a reader.

The novel is set in 1812.

In the introductory pages, Frost tells us that there is "sometimes distrust and fighting between the two communities" but that friendships and intermarriage are common (p. xiii).

The two communities live in two places. One is in Kekionga, a village that Frost tells us is part of the Miami nation. The other community is Fort Wayne, where 80 soldiers, their wives, and children live. The fort is inside of a stockade. Outside of the fort (but inside the stockade), are a few more families, some fields, and a trading post where a trader and his family live.

Kekionga was actually more than that. It was the seat of a confederacy of Indian tribes. Frost's characterization of it as a village seems a small point, but I think my problem with her novel is that there's lot of small points like that. In isolation, they seem inconsequential. In total, they are what is--for me--the novel's undoing.

The story focuses on two twelve year old boys. It is presented in two voices, each alternating with the other (by chapter) as they view the same events from their distinct vantage points. One of the boys is Miami. His name is Anikwa. On the pages where he is speaking, Frost arranges the text in geometric patterns that were inspired by Miami ribbon work. The other boy is James. He's the trader's son. The text on the pages where he is speaking is arranged in lines that Frost says are like the lines of the American flag. If we step away from that presentation, we have Native people represented as art, and, American people represented as nation. (Sentence in italics added on March 3, 2014.)

The text is sparse, and that, I think is another reason the novel doesn't work. We don't know enough about that period of history, or about the Miami Nation and its resistance to encroachment, to be able to read the sparse text within a context that this story needs.

Anikwa lives with his extended family. His mother died of smallpox when he was two, and his father was killed a year later in "a skirmish" (p. 7).  Given that the novel is set in 1812, we can do some math and see that his father died in 1803. What skirmish, I wondered, would that have been? I wondered, too, about Frost's introductory note about how there was (emphasis mine) "sometimes distrust and fighting."

I started digging and came across a treaty in 1803. It was a treaty between the United States and Delawares, Shawanoes, Putawatimies, Miamies, Eel River, Weeas, Kickapoos, Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias nations of Indians. The treaty was made at Fort Wayne. It is fairly short. You can read it in its entirety at the Digital Library at Oklahoma State. Of particular interest--given the title of Frost's book--is Article 3. It is all about salt! Here's what it says:

ARTICLE 3.

As a mark of their regard and attachment to the United States, whom they acknowledge for their only friends and protectors, and for the consideration herein after mentioned, the said tribes do hereby relinquish and cede to the United States the great salt spring upon the Saline creek which falls into the Ohio below the mouth of the Wabash, with a quantity of land surrounding it, not exceeding four miles square, and which may be laid off in a square or oblong as the one or the other may be found most convenient to the United States: And the said United States being desirous that the Indian tribes should participate in the benefits to be derived from the said spring, hereby engage to deliver yearly and every year for the use of the said Indians, a quantity of salt not exceeding one hundred and fifty bushels, and which shall be divided among the several tribes in such manner as the general council of the chiefs may determine.

The treaty says that the U.S. will "delivery yearly and every year for the use of the said Indians, a quantity of salt not exceeding one hundred and fifty bushels, and which shall be divided among the several tribes in such manner as the general council of the chiefs may determine."

We have a treaty in 1803 that says salt will be delivered. I assume that means Indians won't have to buy salt. But in Frost's novel, Anikwa's family has to buy salt from James's family. How do we go from a treaty that says the government will deliver salt to the Miami Indians, to the Miami Indians having to buy salt? See? That's one of the gaps that I struggle with in terms of the text being sparse. On page 51, Anikwa's family is planning a trip to the trading post. Mink (Anikwa's aunt, who is raising him because, remember, his mother died when he was two and his father was killed when he was three) says they need salt. Old Raccoon (he's Anikwa's uncle/Mink's husband) scowls and says:

"They take it (salt) from our land, then sell it back to us."

When they get to the trading post, Old Raccoon says "We need salt" but James's father says "No more salt" even though the salt barrel, which is visible to all, is half-full.

More digging got at my unease with Frost's characterization of relationships between the Indians and Americans. Remember, she said "sometimes" there was "distrust and fighting" between them. Throughout the first part of the book, there are discussions of an impending siege in which the Americans are afraid that British soldiers and Indians will lay siege on the fort before the American soldiers can arrive. On page 59, James's parents are talking about the siege. James tells his Pa that he thought the Indians are on the side of the Americans. Pa says that there are Indians from all over are coming and its hard to say who among them are friends of the Americans. Ma says "we'll continue to treat the Miami as the friends they've always been."

Does Ma mean that Anikwa's family has always been a friend to her own family? Or does she mean that the Miami have always been friends to the Americans? If it is the latter, she's wrong.

In the 1780s and 1790s, there was a great deal of killing going on. Americans were killing Indians and Indians were killing Americans. This was over the land and who it belonged to. It was over who had the right to enter into a treaty, and with what other nation. The Indians had formed a confederacy and were aligned with the British.

In April of 1790, Miami's attacked a flotilla of military supply boats, killing five soldiers and taking eight prisoners. In 1794, General Anthony Wayne and his troops defeated the Indian confederacy, and in 1795 the Treaty of Greenville was signed. There's more--a lot more--about the fighting that took place in those years that, I think, casts "sometimes" into question.

But let's get back to the story itself for a moment.

There's some inconsistencies, I think, in how the characters act.

One moment, Old Raccoon is talking about needing to save his bullets for something bigger than a duck. He laments treaty violations. A few days later, he's volunteering to guide American women and children in the fort to safety.

James seems to think well of Anikwa and he also seems to disapprove of his father's actions. But on page 70, he sees Anikwa carrying a rabbit from one of his snares, and he thinks that Anikwa isn't his friend after all. That seems abrupt. They struggle and James runs home with the rabbit. Anikwa thinks that "we don't need any of them" (p. 73). That seems a bit abrupt, too.

A few pages later, the trading post is burned and the soldiers and James's family have no meat. Anikwa takes some to them, hiding it in a tree. James retrieves it, and later, James and his dad put some salt into that same tree for Anikwa.

Those friendships shift from friendly to not-friendly and back again a bit too fast. Maybe, in a time of war, that sort of thing happened, but I go back to the overall history and context. The distrust and fighting that had been going on for a long long time was over the land. American settlers kept coming into land that belonged to the Indians. On page 121, James's mother is writing to her sister in Philadelphia, telling her there is good land to be had. Rupert (a person in the fort) tells her "this part of the territory isn't open for settlement yet" and that treaty details still need to be worked out. The way his remarks are presented suggests that the Americans are law-abiding people who wouldn't be squatters. But--that doesn't jibe with the history!

By the end of the story, the homes of both boys have been burned. Soldiers burn Kekionga, its cornfields, and the surrounding forest, too. Anikwa and his family are safe, having steadily moved on until the burning stopped but they decide to return to Kekionga and rebuild. Once there, James and his family bring them items that James's father took from Anikwa's home before it was burned. Anikwa and his family offer food to James and his family. They eat together and then play music together. The story ends.

What do we, the reader, come away with?

Friendships that persevere, no matter what?

Frost's book reminds me of the much-loved Thanksgiving story. Sitting together for meals in the midst of turmoil and war is possible, but I'm not sure how plausible it is. As Frost tells us, there are friendships between the Indians and the Americans. But overwhelmingly, the history is one of loss of Indian life and land. Overwhelmingly. That is the history.

Nonetheless, these two families eat together. In light of what preceded that moment, and what happened after it, the story doesn't work for me. It ends up being somewhat of a feel-good story that suggests optimism and hope for relationships between peoples in conflict, but for me, it masks the truth.

And so, I can't recommend Frost's Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War. 

On the back of the book, Daryl Baldwin, Director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University, says that Frost "dives below the simple narrative of natives versus settlers to give us a refreshing look at the human side of events in the War of 1812." I'd like Daryl to read it more carefully. I met him some years ago and will send my review to him. I'll share whatever I get back from him, and I'll keep thinking about Salt. 

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Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War 
Author: Helen Frost
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published in July 2013

Beverly Slapin's review essay of Helen Frost's SALT

Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin submitted this review essay of Helen Frost's SALT, comparing it to Bruchac's ARROW OVER THE DOOR. It may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013. Slapin is currently the publisher/editor of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children.

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A few years ago, a colleague and I facilitated a workshop in Albuquerque. The workshop dealt with evaluating children’s books about Indian peoples. It was a small group, about 20 or so participants, mostly teachers and librarians in the area. Of these, some were Diné (Navajo) and some were white. At one point, we brought out one of the worst historical fiction books in our collection, Scott O’Dell’s SING DOWN THE MOON.[1] We asked the participants to read sections of this book and, based on a series of evaluative questions, to review it. They did, and almost all of them agreed that this was not a book they’d use in their classrooms or libraries.

Except for one, a Diné elder, who worked specifically with Diné young people—“reluctant readers” at risk for dropping out of school. This elder said that each year, she purchases a new class set of SING DOWN THE MOON because it’s the first book her students actually get excited about. My colleague and I were astonished. We just looked at each other. We weren’t about to confront an elder, especially a Diné elder, especially about a book purporting to be about Navajo people. So we waited.

What seemed like an eternity was actually just a couple of minutes. This elder told us that she brings SING DOWN THE MOON into the classroom each year, opens it up and starts reading it aloud. The reaction, she said, is immediate. “They just can’t stop laughing,” she said, in disbelief that a book about their Diné people could be this bad. We’d never leave our sheep in a storm. This isn’t how our ceremonies go. We don’t talk like this. They reach for the books. They read the story, again and again. They laugh about it. They talk about it. They critique it. They write about it. The books get marked up, some pages get folded over and others get torn out. It doesn’t matter, the elder said, because her students have gotten excited about a book. Then, she said, she introduces them to BLACK MOUNTAIN BOY: A STORY OF THE BOYHOOD OF JOHN HONIE[2] and other books published by Rough Rock Press and the Navajo Curriculum Center, traditional stories they recognize and new stories they appreciate.

SING DOWN THE MOON received the Newbery Honor Award. It received rave reviews from all of the “mainstream” reviewers, including The New York Times. Not one of the reviewers saw any of what made the Diné students fall out of their chairs.

If there’s a moral to this story, it might be this: Some really terrible books can probably be used in good ways. (But I could not bring myself to purchase a class set of them.)

Here are some questions I’ve used and taught in evaluating historical fiction: Is this book based on true events or are the details rooted in actual history? Is this book based on the lives of real people or could these people really have lived? Does the author have an understanding of and respect for the era and the characters? Are the characters believable and does the author present the characters’ ways of seeing the world respectfully? Does the author explain cultural nuances that may be misunderstood? Are the language and the dialogue believable? And finally, does the book read well?

Which brings me to one of my favorite historical novels for young readers: Joseph Bruchac’s THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR.[3] Bruchac is a gifted writer, and one of the things he does well is breathe life into historical events.

Told in alternating voices of two young men—Stands Straight, an Abenaki, and Samuel Russell, a Quaker—the story is based on an actual incident that took place between the Abenaki and the Quakers during the summer of 1777.

As British troops near Saratoga, the young Quaker wrestles with his pacifism and the taunts of his neighbors, and Stands Straight—whose mother and brothers were killed by the Bostoniak—joins his uncle in a scouting party. Surrounding the meetinghouse, the party of Abenaki encounters a group of Quakers engaged in a “silent meeting.” As Stands Straight and Samuel Russell sign their friendship to each other, they place an arrow—its head broken off—over the door. There will be no war in this place this day.

In an interesting author’s note, Bruchac recounts the research that he and his sister, Marge Bruchac, conducted, notes how several accounts of this historical event differ, and further denotes the changes he made in his telling.

While SING DOWN THE MOON would not measure up to the standards of the questions listed a few paragraphs above, THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR would shine. 

Which brings me to a young adult novel currently being discussed,[4] Helen Frost's SALT: A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP IN A TIME OF WAR [5]. As with THE ARROW OVER THE DOOR, this story is also told in alternating voices of two young men—Anikwa, a Myaamia (Miami) living in Kekionga, and James, son of a trader family, living outside of Fort Wayne, inside the stockade. SALT takes place in 1812. “As the British and American armies prepare to meet at Fort Wayne for a crucial battle…James and Anikwa, like everyone around them, must decide where their deepest loyalties lie. Can their families—and their friendship—survive?”[6]

In reading SALT against ARROW, I don’t see Anikwa and James as believable as Stands Straight and Samuel, and I question some of the introductory description, such as

• “Kekionga is part of the Miami Nation, a Native American community made up of villages along the rivers…”  (In the year in which this story takes place, the Myaamia Nation was the seat of a huge political confederacy of nations. The terms “community” and “villages” diminishes the size and political structure—and, for young readers and their teachers, the importance—of the Myaamia. In an attempt to equalize Anikwa’s people with James’ people—who really were a small trading community—Frost diminishes one and emphasizes the other.)

• “Although there is sometimes distrust and fighting between the two communities, friendships and intermarriage are also common.” This was wartime; there was lots of killing going on. Although it’s possible that friendships between enemy peoples may have occurred, to describe the horrors of war as “sometimes distrust and fighting” minimizes the depredation of Native peoples and the wholesale theft of land. (And notice that, while the word “sometimes” is a descriptor for war, “common” is a descriptor for friendship. Here, in her “story of friendship,” she minimizes the larger and emphasizes the smaller.)

• In places, Anikwa seems to step out of the story to inform readers about how his family lives and how things are done. This is probably for the benefit of young readers and their teachers who may not be familiar with how the Myaamia people lived in 1812, but it disrupts the flow of the narrative.

• And, as Debbie Reese comments, “We don't know enough about that period of history, or about the Miami Nation and its resistance to encroachment, to be able to read the sparse text within a context that this story needs.”[7] Reading the treaty of 1803[8] might help, as well as reading the material on the Myaamia Center website.[9] But are young students and their teachers going to dig as deeply as they need to, to get the real story?

Myaamia children who may read SALT will undoubtedly have the historical and cultural knowledge they’d need to deal with the inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies present in Frost’s book. For children and their teachers who are not Myaamia, not so much. Since historical fiction is often used in classrooms to supplement the teaching of history, accuracy is especially important in these books for young readers. When it comes down to it, it's the responsibility of an author—especially a children's book author—to get the history right.

—Beverly Slapin

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[1] Scott O’Dell, Sing Down the Moon (Houghton Mifflin, 1970). See a critical review of this title in Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin, eds., A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children (AltaMira, 2005).

[2] Vada Carleson and Gary Witherspoon, Black Mountain Boy: A Story of the Boyhood of John Honie (Rough Rock Press, 1993).

[3] See a review of this title in Seale and Slapin, op. cit.

[4] See Debbie Reese’s discussion and comments in “American Indians in Children’s Literature” (americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com).

[5] Helen Frost, Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

[6] This text is from the publisher’s copy.

[7] Debbie Reese, op. cit., October 13, 2013.

[8] This treaty is between the US and Delawares, Shawanoes, Putawatimies, Miamies, Eel River, Weeas, Kickapoos, Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias nations of Indians. Article 3 can be found on Debbie Reese’s page, op. cit., and the entire treaty (entitled “Treaty with the Delawares, etc., 1803”) can be found at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/del0064.htm.

[9] http://myaamiacenter.org/

2013 CCBC Data on Fiction by/about American Indians - US Publishers

I studied the 2013 list of books received by the Cooperative Center for Children's Books (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that CCBC lists as being by/about American Indians/First Nations/Latin America.

CCBC is careful to note that the list means nothing about quality. It is just a tally of books they received. In total, the list they shared with me has 34 books on it. I am going to analyze the books on the list. I am grateful to CCBC for sending me the list, and I'm grateful to them for compiling this data every year. This is the first year I'm doing this analysis.

To start with, I am limiting my analysis of the list to works of fiction published by U.S. publishers, which means 13 books (I am excluding Little Red Riding Boots, which is on the CCBC list for its illustrator; the book itself has no cultural content specific to American Indians).

BIG FIVE PUBLISHERS*

The "Big Five" publishing houses and/or their imprints published four works of fiction. None of them are by Native writers.

I do not recommend Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper or Crazy Horse: Brave Warrior by Ann Hood because there is a great deal of stereotyping in both. From the way the Native characters behave to the way they speak... stereotyping. Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon and Schuster)

I do not recommend Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War by Helen Frost because I find it problematic to look for Indian people, make friends with them, and report that they asked you to write a book about them. And then, that book turns out to be a not-plausible work of historical fiction where White people and Indian people, before and after intense war, were friends. Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Macmillan)

I do not recommend Written in Stone by Rosanne Parry, partly became she writes at length of "Chief Lelooska" and the Lelooska Foundation which perform and stereotype rather than educate, and, she sends her young readers to Lelooska, too. Though she taught children at the Quinault school, Parry's book echoes stereotype rather than reality. Publisher: Random House.

The fourth book is Bo at Ballard Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill. Set in a gold mining camp in Alaska, the author tells us it is from her memories of living in a mining camp when she was a child. At her site, she says "Gold rushes are inherently sexy, with lots of wild, death-defying activity, over-the-top characters, and some dazzling rags-to-riches stories." It fails in the same way that Locomotive did. It celebrates something that has a very dark side to it, with that dark side having a negative impact on Indigenous people. Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (Macmillan)

These writers meant well. Each one of them has written about their motivation for writing these books. Each one, however, approached the project from a well-intentioned, but ultimately flawed, desire to tell a Native story, from a Native perspective (the exception is Bo at Ballard Creek, which does not take a Native perspective). To varying degrees, they are the white person so enchanted by our spirit or culture, or so infuriated by how we and our Nations are treated historically and in literature, that they decided to write these stories. Many readers--reading from that same position--feel very moved or inspired by their motivation and their books. There are others, however, who do not feel that same inspiration. Some (like me) are often more than a little irked that we keep getting books by white writers who just recycle stereotypes and biased stories. It plays to the mainstream expectation of what Native peoples are supposed to be, but that expectation is so far from what Native and non-Native readers ought to get, especially in books for young people.

SMALLER PUBLISHERS

Nine works of fiction by smaller publishing houses are on the CCBC list for 2014. One is by a writer who is not Native; eight are by Native writers.

The one by a writer who is not Native is Rob Owen's Spy Boy, Cheyenne, and 96 Crayons. It is published by Pelican Press. I am not able to get a copy of it and can't say anything about it.

The other eight? I recommend them. They don't stereotype. As far as my research has determined, they don't err with cultural material.

Joseph Bruchac's Killer of Enemies is published by Tu Books of Lee and Low. It is a post apocalyptic story with a female protagonist named Lozen who is a descendent of a noted Chiricahua Apache woman. Update on Sep 30 2023: I (Debbie Reese) no longer recommend Bruchac's work. For details see Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki?

Art Coulson's The Creator's Game: A Story of Baaga'adowe/Lacrosse, published by the Minnesota Historical Press, is about Travis, a present-day boy sixth-grade Ojibwe boy who is getting started as a lacrosse player.

Eric Gansworth If I Ever Get Out of Here is one of my all-time favorites. I highly recommend it. No stereotyping in it. No romanticizing of a Native identity or history in it, and no performance of a not-legit Native identity, either. Elsewhere on AICL I've written about it, so won't go on and on here. It is by Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic).

Gary Robinson's Little Brother of War, published by 7th Generation, is about a present-day Choctaw boy who thinks he's not an athlete like his big brother who was killed in Iraq. At a Choctaw gathering he finds himself playing stickball (a traditional game known as Little Brother of War), at which he excels.

Tim Tingle's How I Became a Ghost is published by Road Runner Press. It is set on the Trail of Tears, but in Tingle's deft storytelling voice, the story is more about the humanity and perseverance of the Choctaw people than the tragedy of removal.

Tingle's Danny Blackgoat: Navajo Prisoner is published by 7th Generation. This is the only book of Tingle's in which he writes outside of his own people (Choctaw). Though his storytelling skills are present, it doesn't have the depth that his Choctaw stories do. Even so, it is far more commendable than Cooper, Hood, Frost, Parry, or Hill.

Richard Van Camp's Little You, published by Orca, is a delightful board book celebrating a child's birth and childhood. Coupled with art by Metis artist Julie Flett, this book is gorgeous.

Richard Wagamese's Him Standing, published by Orca, is not--in my view--meant for young adult readers who are at the younger end of that scale (the range of YA is 12-18). A very dark thriller, the protagonist in Wagamese's book is 20 and living with his girlfriend.


SOME INITIAL CONCLUSIONS

The comparison between the two sets of books is lopsided in terms of quality. Really lopsided. The problematic books from the Big Five are doing well in the marketplace, which is no surprise. They have the marketing force of a major publisher, and, the stories cater to mainstream expectations of what stories about Native people will be about, and that's too bad! How are we going to get that depiction off of center stage?

My answer is:

1) Reject those problematic books. Tell others what is wrong with them.

2) Buy and recommend books that provide readers with stories that accurately present Native characters and culture. Tell others about them.

Bottom line of my analysis? Of the 13 books that I was able to read, I recommend 8 of them.

On March 16th, 2014, The New York Times ran an opinion piece by former children's literature ambassador, Walter Dean Myers. Titled "Where are the People of Color in Children's Books?", Myers pointed to the CCBC data. Of the 3,200 children's books published in 2014, 93 were about black people. I'm curious about the 93 books. What genre? What quality?

In 2013, CCBC received 34 about American Indians. In the analysis above, I looked only at fiction by US publishers. I have not yet looked at fiction by Canadian publishers, and nonfiction by US or Canadian publishers. Here's the numerical breakdown of that:

Fiction - US publishers = 14
Fiction - Canadian publishers = 8
Nonfiction - US publishers = 7
Nonfiction - Canadian publishers = 3

In 2013, CCBC reports that:

5000 books were published
3200 of those 5000 were sent to CCBC
13 of them were works of fiction about American Indians/First Nations/Latin America

Of those 13 works of fiction, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) recommends eight. As a society, we need those eight works of fiction in every school and public library, and in every classroom. Buy them. Booktalk them. Promote them every chance you get.

We need to buy those eight works of fiction so that the publishers and editors who worked on them will be encouraged to seek out additional manuscripts by those writers.

We need to thank editors like Cheryl Klein who worked with Eric Gansworth on If I Ever Get Out of Here, and Jeanne Devlin who worked with Tim Tingle on How I Became A Ghost, and Stacy Whitman who worked with Joseph Bruchac on Killer of Enemies for the care they took in bringing those books to us.

We thank those individuals by buying the books. 

By buying more than one copy of the books.  

__________
*On April 10, 2016, I edited this post. Though Scholastic is a major publisher, it is not considered to be one of the Big Houses.

BLUE BIRDS by Caroline Starr Rose

In Caroline Rose Starr's Blue Birds, the two main characters are Alis, an English girl, and Kimi, a Roanoke girl. Set in July 1587, Blue Birds is a Lost Colony story.

Alis and her family come ashore at Roanoke. Among them is Governor White and his daughter. She is pregnant with Virginia (Virginia Dare is widely recognized as the first English person born in what came to be known as the United States).They are in the fourth English group that Kimi's people interact with. Before them, we read, there were three other groups. The first one took two Native men back to England: Mateo (a Croatoan) and Wanchese (a Roanoke).

With Alis's group is Manteo. Having spent the last few months living in London, he dresses like English people but still has long hair. Alis thinks of him as "that savage."

Kimi watches Alis's group. She thinks of them as "strange ones." Some of her people think they are "spirits back from the dead" and others say that they have "invisible weapons that strike with sickness after they've gone." Kimi's father told her they were "people like us, only with different ways." But, her father is dead.

Dead? Yes. Soon, we learn that Kimi's father, Wingina, was beheaded by the second group of colonists, and that Wanchese (he's her uncle) killed the people in the third group.

Did you catch that? The English beheaded her father. Yet, she's going to befriend Alis.

Possible? Yes. Plausible? I don't think so.

Why does she do this? Because she's lonely.

See, her sister died of disease brought by those English.

Did you catch that?! Her sister's death is due to the English. But... she's going to befriend this English girl?

Possible? Yes. Plausible? I don't think so!

And... Alis. When they land, she finds the bones of a man. She worries they may be the bones of her uncle, Samuel. Soon after that, one of the Englishmen (Mr. Howe) is killed, adding to her fear of the Roanoke people. She imagines them, waiting. Watching. Yet, she, too, is lonely enough to move past her fears. Is that possible? Yes. It is plausible? I don't think so!

Human emotions aside, let's look at the some of the ways the Roanoke people think and live.

It is a challenge to imagine how the people of a culture not your own, of a time not your own would think of you. In this case, we have a not-Native writer imagining how Native people think about English people. A good many non-Native writers lapse into a space where we (Native people) are shown as primitive and in awe of Europeans who came to Native lands. We see this in Kimi (Kindle Locations 367-370):

The English have great power,
mightier than we have seen
in the agile deer,
the arrows of our enemies,
the angry hurricane.
Able to blot out the sun.

There's other things that bother me about Blue Birds. One of the stereotypical ways of depicting Native people is how quietly they move, not making a sound. Kimi does that. Another stereotype is the way that Kimi thinks of Alis's wooden bird. Kimi thinks it is Alis's power:

I imagine her cowering in her village
without her power.
I want to see
her weakness.

She comes from brutal people,
yet is as loving
with her mother as we are.

Can both things we true?

That passage in Blue Birds gets at the heart of what I think Caroline Rose Starr is trying to do. Have two girls come to see past differences in who each one and her people are, to the humanity in both. She's not the first to do this. Children's literature has a lot of historical fiction like this... Sign of the Beaver is one; so is Helen Frost's Salt. 

When the two girls come face to face, Kimi thinks of her dad and sister's death. In her language, she tells Alis "You have brought us sorrow." Kimi sees that Alis is frightened by her words and thinks that balance has been restored.

The balance has been restored?! I think that's too tidy.

There are other things that don't sit well with me... the parts of the story where Kimi has a ceremony, marking her passage from child to woman is one. The parts where the Roanoke's are dancing around the fire at night, preparing for attack? That just reminds me of Little House on the Prairie! Indeed, Alis's mom reminds me of Ma!

As the friendship between the two girls continues, they worry for each other's safety. Kimi gives Alis her montoac (power, pearls given to her in that womanhood ceremony). In the end, Alis goes Native. That is, she chooses to live with Kimi. And when the English return, she looks upon them, crouching behind some reeds as she watches them.

That ending--with Alis living with Indians--parallels a theory about what happened to that Lost Colony. In the author's note, Starr tells readers about the Lost Colony. I'm glad to see that note but the story she told? Overall, for me it does not work, and it makes me wonder about the motivation to create friendship stories like this? They seem so more idealized than anything that might really happen between children of peoples at war. And, given that these stories are told--not by Native people--seems telling, too. Borne, perhaps, of guilt? Or what? I don't know, really.

Starr's Blue Bird, published in 2015 by G. P. Putnam's Sons (an imprint of Penguin Group) is not recommended.