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.
____________________________________________________________
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
[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).
[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/
