Looking for nonfiction?

People write to me asking about the merits of this or that nonfiction book or series, which one(s) I recommend, etc. Keeping up with them, and/or writing a comprehensive review is daunting, and something I have not done. A lot of nonfiction has photographs that I like. For example, Marcia Keegan's books (listed below in the not recommended section) are about Pueblo people. I like the photos! The captions... not so much. I'm pretty sure Pueblo kids would like those photos, too, and I'd love to sit with them and write new captions for the photos. Maybe we'd use a Sharpie! And we could re-write problematic text, too! That would be an excellent activity, showing them that books have errors--that, in this case, the kids know more than the author... that books are not perfect. 

Though I've not done any reviews of series, I can offer this:

In A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin, you'll find a section titled "Reviews: Photoessays of Indian Children." 

I strongly encourage you to buy A Broken Flute and read the reviews in their entirety. You'll learn a lot from studying those reviews. That study will help you in your collection development (decisions on what to get/what to weed) in the future. Here's my sorting of the reviews into three categories, recommended/recommended, but some parts uneven/not recommended and in two parts. First are books that stand alone, and second are books in a series. 

Recommended

Ancona, George:

• Earth Daughter: Alicia of Acoma Pueblo
• Mayeros: A Yucatan Maya Family
• Pablo Remembers: The Fiesta of the Day of the Dead
• Powwow

Jenness, Aylette and Alice Rivers. In Two Worlds: A Yup'ik Eskimo Family

LaDuke, Winona and Waseyabin Kapashesit. The Sugar Bush

McMillan, Bruce. Salmon Summer

Rendon, Marcie. Powwow Summer: A Family Celebrates the Circle of Life

Rose, LaVera. Grandchildren of the Lakota

Thompson, Sheila. Cheryl Bibalhatsl/Cheryl's Potlach

Recommended, but some parts uneven 

Brown, Tricia. Children of the Midnight Sun: Young Native Voices of Alaska. 

Gravelle, Karen. Growing Up: Where the Partridge Drums Its Wings 

Kendall, Ross. Eskimo Boy: Life in an Inupiaq Eskimo Village

Sola, Michele. Angela Weaves a Dream: The Story of a Young Maya Artist

Wolf, Bernard. Beneath the Stone: A Mexican Zapotec Tale

Not recommended

Garcia, Guy. Spirit of the Maya: A Boy Explores His People's Mysterious Past

Hazen-Hammond, Suzan. Thunder Bear and Ko: The Buffalo Nation and Nambe Pueblo

Hoyt-Goldsmith, Diane.

• Apache Rodeo
• Arctic Hunter
• Buffalo Days
• Cherokee Summer
• Day of the Dead: A Mexican-American Celebration
• Lacrosse: The National Game of the Iroquois
• Potlatch: A Tsimshian Celebration
• Pueblo Storyteller
• Totem Pole

Keegan, Marcia

• Pueblo Boy: Growing Up in Two Worlds
• Pueblo Girls: Growing Up in Two Worlds

Mott, Evelyn Clarke. Dancing Rainbows

Reynolds, Jan. Frozen Land: Vanishing Cultures

Wood, Ted, with Wanbli Numpa Afraid of Hawk. A Boy Becomes a Man at Wounded Knee

SERIES

Recommended, but parts uneven

"My World: Young Native Americans Today"

Published by Beyond Words, in association with the National Museum of the American Indian

• Belarde-Lewis, Miranda. Meet Lydia: A Native Girl from Southeast Alaska
• Secakuku, Susan. Meet Mindy: A Native Girl from the Southwest
• Tayac, Gabrielle. Meet Naiche: A Native Boy from the Chesapeake Bay Area

"We Are Still Here"

Published by Lerner

• Braine, Susan. Drumbeat... Heartbeat: A Celebration of the Powwow
• Hunter, Sally. Four Seasons of Corn: A Winnebago Tradition
• King, Sandra and Catherine Whipple. Shannon: An Ojibway Dancer
• Mercredi, Morningstar and Darren McNally. Fort Chipewyan Homecoming: A Journey to Native Canada
• Nichols, Richard and D. Bambi Kraus. A Story to Tell: Traditions of a Tlingit Community
• Peters, Russell M. Clambake: A Wampanoag Tradition
• Regguinti, Gordon. The Sacred Harvest: Ojibway Wild Rice Gathering
• Roessel, Monty. Kinaalda: A Navajo Girl Grows Up
• Roessel, Monty. Songs from the Loom: A Navajo Girl Learns to Weave
• Swentzell, Rina and Bill Steen. Children of Clay: A Family of Pueblo Potters
• Wittstock, Laura Waterman and Dale Kakkak. Ininatig's Gift of Sugar: Traditional Sugarmaking
• Wittstock, Laura Waterman and Dale Kakkak. Sugar Bush: Ojibway Maple Sugarmaking
• Yamane, Linda. Weaving a California Tradition: A Native American Basketweaver

Not recommended

"The Library of Intergenerational Learning: Native Americans"

Published by PowerKids/Rosen

Kavasch, E. Barrie. 

• Apache Children and Elders Talk Together
• Blackfoot Children and Elders Talk Together
• Crow Children and Elders Talk Together
• Lakota Sioux Children and Elders Talk Together
• Seminole Children and Elders Talk Together
• Zuni Children and Elders Talk Together

"The World's Children" (exception is Grandchildren of the Lakota by LaVera Rose)

Published by Carolrhoda/Lerner

Hermes, Jules. Children of Guatemala

Pitkanen, Matti A. The Grandchildren of the Incas

Staub, Frank. 

• Children of the Sierra Madre
• Children of the Tlingit
• Children of Yucatan

One more thing!

Another reason to get a copy of A Broken Flute is its guide to evaluating photo essays! Here's a photo of the top part of it (the guide is by Naomi Caldwell, Debbie Reese, and Beverly Slapin):

Update, 8/22/2015

In a comment, Ami said the Kavash book about Apaches is well received where she is. I don't know Ami or where she is. I don't know if she's read it. I asked and told her I'd see what A Broken Flute says about Kavash's books. Here are screen caps of the review, by Beverly Slapin (note: I added Slapin's name to this update later in the day, on 8/22/2015):

Babar Playing Indian in BABAR COMES TO AMERICA

I am always grateful to readers who write to me. Sometimes they write with a question. Sometimes they write to thank me for a review. Sometimes, they send me something to take a look at. This morning's mail had one of the later.

Tricia wrote to tell me about a page in Babar Comes to America. As I read her email, I remember seeing that book in a bookstore and snapping a photo of the page she sent to me. I'd lost track of it and am grateful to Tricia for sending it along so I can include it in AICL's Foul Among the Good page.

Published in 1965 by Random House and again in 2008 by Abrams, Babar Comes to America is by Laurent de Brunhoff.  One of the places Babar visits is the Grand Canyon, where "Babar and Arthur pay a visit to the Indians":

Helen Therese Frank writes:

To source this new title about America, de Brunhoff and his wife were invited to the United States in 1963, with expenses paid by the American publisher and several American companies who are acknowledged in the text and illustrations (Hildebrand, 1991).

Presumably, de Brunhoff and his wife were actually at the Grand Canyon, but what Indians did they see there? Was there really one called "Chief Sitting Bull" who was telling "hunting tales" and "the legend of the White Buffalo"?! Was he sitting on a drum? Was he barefoot?!

It is possible--but not likely--that de Brunhoff saw a "Sitting Bull" but this all strikes me as the imaginings of an outsider who was there but didn't understand what he saw. Rather than depict what he saw with accuracy, de Brunhoff turned to stereotyping when he created this in 1963.

Why, I wonder, did that page go unchanged when the book was published again in 2008? Who, I wonder, edited the book at Abrams? If changes can be made to Curious George playing Indian, I think they can be made to Babar Comes to America, too. What do you think?

This is the second post I've done on Babar. The first one was about Babar's World Tour.