Though that perception is out there and gets circulated a lot, it can be quickly batted down if one pauses to think about some of the books I recommend: Debby Dahl Edwardson's My Name Is Not Easy. Debby is not Native. Joseph Bruchac's The Story of the Milky Way: A Cherokee Tale. Joe is not Cherokee.
That said, my preference is books by Native writers because when a parent or teacher or librarian recommends them, they can use present tense verbs in the recommendation. This will increase visibility of Native people as part of today's society. They could, for example, say "Tim Tingle is Choctaw. His book, How I Became A Ghost, is set on the Trail of Tears. Members of his family were on the Trail of Tears." And--they could say "The Choctaw Nation has a website, and so does Mr. Tingle. He's pretty cool... He's on Twitter, too!"
There have been some very eloquent posts to the CCBC-NET discussion that sought to bring clarity and context to it. If you're not currently a subscriber to CCBC-NET, you can join anytime and read the archived discussion.
Online, you can read what Cynthia Leitich Smith wrote about it at Cynsations. Her post, titled "Writing, Tonto & the Wise-Cracking Minority Sidekick Who Is the First to Die" is full of terrific information. Reading it, I was thrilled to learn that she's introduced a Native character in book 2 of her Feral trilogy. The first book is Feral Nights. It, and book two, Feral Curse, are getting bumped up on my reading list.
A few years ago when Tumblr started gaining traction, I created one for AICL but hadn't done much with it at all. I am taking a little time of late to develop it. It is a new thing for me, and because it is new and not very deep, I'm willing to play with the HTML code a bit. A bit. A tiny bit. This morning I added a date/time stamp and, hurray! It worked. Here's a screen capture of my latest post:
If you're on Tumblr and want to see what I'm doing, here's my page: debbiereese.tumblr.com. If I'm not doing something right over there, let me know!
