Established in 2006 by Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical analysis of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books. Dr. Jean Mendoza joined AICL as a co-editor in 2016.
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Last week more copies of JINGLE DANCER for holiday gifts!
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading through "One Nation, One Year: a navajo photographer's 365-day journey into a world of discovery, life and hope" by Navajo photographer Don James and Karyth Becenti. I heard James give a presentation on this book at the 2010 Indigenous Book Festival at the University of New Mexico. I was impressed by him and his work and so when I returned to IL I purchased a copy.I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteCynthia Leitich Smith's Indian Shoes for a nephew in Oklahoma, and Jingle Dancer for a classroom I'm rather attached to.
ReplyDeleteand thanks, Matt, for recommending One Nation, One Year -- I'll have to get a copy.
I don't know if either of these would fall under the American Indian subject since they're both about First Nations people in Canada, but:
ReplyDelete"This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades", which is a collection of personal essays about the so-called Oka Crisis (I've only read about 5 of them so far), and "We Were Not the Savages", a history book that I still haven't gotten the chance to do more than go "Yup, it's on my shelf."
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Education Beyond The Mesas:Hopi Students At Sherman Institute, 1902-1929
ReplyDeleteI learned of this book from Matt’s Beyond The Mesas website at http://beyondthemesas.com and bought a copy at Amazon.
As a retired Social Studies public school teacher I am always interested in education and cultural questions of equity and fairness. Currently I am working on a (film/website) Teacher-To-Teacher Project based on the idea that non-indigenous public school teachers can learn from North American indigenous teachers/leaders to be a better teacher about indigenous cultures in their classroom curriculum and instruction. Matt’s book will help one understand Hopi culture and the boarding school experience which will help me with my Project goals. Also, another interest I have in Matt’s book is I grew up in Riverside, California, the location of the tribal boarding school Sherman Institute, and have always wondered about that experience for people I saw there sometimes as a group walking to a movie theater on Sundays near Sherman campus. Very little was spoken in the community I was in about Sherman Institute even though the campus was huge and many tribal people were there (1950’s). Matt’s book will help with this question too.
Indian Shoes by Cynthia Leitich Smith. I bought it at the KPL Youth Literature Seminar, because it looked like a good book for younger, possibly reluctant readers, and because it depicts modern Indians living in an urban area. It's a great book.
ReplyDeleteI have not heard of the One Nation, One Year… book before. I will definitely have to look that one over the winter break.
I haven't bought any modern books in a while, but the last such book I read was just the other evening, a library copy of Sherman Alexie's _War Dances_.
ReplyDeleteHelen Schinske
We just got this awesome book out at the library and I plan to by it for my children :)
ReplyDeleteLii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: L’Alfabet di Michif / Owls See Clearly At Night: A Michif Alphabet , by Julie Flett
I recently received I Am Nuchu by Brenda Stanley. But the last book I bought was Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith (read it about a week ago and now working on my review).
ReplyDeleteReading it now:
ReplyDeleteTeresa Wright and Fred Bia. "A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling"
Routledge; illustrated edition edition (February 1, 2002)
A story about an incredible struggle, and which has implications for all educational struggles, this book documents the efforts of one community to implement a Prime Directive in its school: Restore and maintain Dine' language and culture, and teach mainstream subjects at the same time.
Still ongoing, the struggle pits the local citizenry against a federal bureaucracy ensconced in tangled mandates, gross ignorance about Navajo culture, financial flailing, and conflicting ideologies.
It is an example of indigenous empowerment and federal/state colonialism at the same time.
Alvin Josephy's The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Pacific Northwest, which I bought for work-related reasons.
ReplyDeleteToday I brought Saltypie by Tim Tingle
ReplyDelete'Weaving Ourselves Into the Land' by Thomas C Parkhill, and 'Tracking Doctor Lonecloud' by Ruth Homes Whitehead.
ReplyDeleteCHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE by Kate Messner.
ReplyDeleteHistorical fiction set in 1609. It's written from the point of view of a young Innu boy called Silent One because he hasn't spoken since his uncle died in battle. Each chapter begins with an actual quote from the journal Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who plays a pivotal role in the story and in Silent One's life.
I learned about the book when Kate Messner joined my online critique group and I read all her books to catch up on her style. This may lead you to believe my thoughts about this book are biased but once you read it, I think you'll do as I did and put it on your shelf of "keepers." It reads as if Kate channeled Silent One, he dictated the story and she wrote it down.
CHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE by Kate Messner
ReplyDeleteHistorical fiction set in 1609. Written from the point of view of young Innu boy known as Silent One because he hasn't spoken since his uncle was killed in battle. Each chapter begins with an actual quote from the diary of Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer, who plays a pivotal role in this story and in Silent One's life.
I learned about this book when Kate Messner joined my online critique group and I read all her books to get a feel for her style. It is now on the "keeper" shelf in my home library. If I didn't know better, I'd swear Kate channeled Silent One, he told the story, she wrote it down. It is that good.
**Forgive me if this posts twice, my first comment seems to have wandered off into cyberspace.
Responses from Twitter:
ReplyDeletemoonb2 got Trickster, the graphic novel
indigeneity got S.D. Nelson's GIFT HORSE
KeenePLibrary got Trickster, the graphic novel
msforster hasn't bought one in awhile but recently read The Eskimo Storyteller: Folktales from Noatak, Alaska
"Meet Lydia: A Native Girl from Southeast Alaska," by Miranda Belarde-Lewis. I purchased it to donate, along with other titles in the series "My World: Young Native Americans Today" ("Meet Naiche: A Native Boy from the Chesapeake Bay Area," by Gabrielle Tayac, and "Meet Christopher: An Osage Indian Boy from Oklahoma," by Genevieve Simermeyer), to my public library, as there were no copies of any of them, in our county system. Now I just need to find a copy of the fourth, "Meet Mindy," and they'll have the lot.
ReplyDelete-Abigail
Just got out Joseph Bruchac's _Wabi_ from the library, based on a recommendation on Child_Lit. I was fascinated to note that a reader had penciled in translations of words into what I think is Vietnamese (e.g., "intruded on" is translated "xâm phạm"). While I don't think people should write in library books generally, I'm not upset at this, because the pencil marks are light and faint and there seems to be an interesting story behind them. (And if you're wondering, yes, the marks go almost all the way through the book, so the reader presumably did finish it.)
ReplyDeleteHelen Schinske
The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich.
ReplyDeleteThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
ReplyDeleteI'm using Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" in two courses I'm teaching at NMU: EN 110 (Good Books) and EN 350 (Methods for English Teachers).
ReplyDeleteThe Only Land They Knew: American Indians in the Old South, J. Leitch Wright Jr.
ReplyDeleteAbout two or three months ago I was perusing my college bookstore (Western Michigan University) and found "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich. In fact, I just read that book in the last two days and found it to be so moving that I consider it a favorite now.
ReplyDelete-Megan
Megan---next time you're there, see if the second and third book are there. I think you'll like them. Their titles are THE GAME OF SILENCE and PORCUPINE YEAR.
ReplyDelete