Jan Brett and Sherman Alexie

Editors Note on Feb 25, 2018: Please see my apology about promoting Alexie's work. --Debbie

Update on Sep 30 2023: I (Debbie Reese) no longer recommend Bruchac's work. For details see Is Joseph Bruchac truly Abenaki?

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Today is December 31, 2007. We’re ending one year and starting another. Looking over the NY Times list of best selling children’s books, I note two books that are on the lists. These two books capture all that is good, and all that is not good, about books by and about American Indians.

On the picture book list is Jan Brett’s The Three Snow Bears. It represents all-that-is-not-good. I would not buy it.

On the chapter books list is Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It represents all-that-is-good. I recommend it, and I give it as gifts. It is astounding on so many levels.

Before I start this discussion, I want to state clearly that I do not believe Jan Brett (or anyone who likes her new book) is racist or misguided. Mis-informed, or maybe, mis-socialized, mis-educated…. That is the root of the problem.

Both books have been on the best selling list for 14 weeks. As of today The Three Snow Bears is ranked at #4; Absolutely True Diary is ranked at #5.

The accompanying NYT blurb for The Three Snow Bears:
"Aloo-ki and the Three Bears: the Goldilocks tale goes to the Arctic Circle."

The blurb for Absolutely True Diary:
"A boy leaves his reservation for an all-white school."

Jan Brett is not an indigenous person. But like many writers, she has written (and illustrated) a book in which Native imagery figures prominently. A lot of writers retell Native stories, changing values and characters in such a way that the story can no longer be called Native. Pollock disneyfied The Turkey Girl, a story told among the Zuni people. Brett didn’t try to retell a Native story. She told an old favorite classic, and set her story in the Arctic. Her Goldilocks is an Inuit girl she named Aloo-ki.

The book flap for the hardcover copy says that Brett went to the Nunavut Territory in northern Canada, I gather, to climb to the Arctic Circle marker. While there she visited a school and according to the flap (note: authors don’t generally write the material on book flaps), “Jan saw the many intelligent, proud faces that became her inspiration for Aloo-ki.”

Why is “faces” modified with “intelligent” and “proud”? Is it Inuit faces that need these modifiers? Do you see such modifiers about the faces of any-kids in any-school? (I also want to say at this point that Brett's inspiration reminded me of Rinaldi's inspiration when she saw the names of Native kids on gravestones at Carlisle Indian School. Rinaldi was so moved by their names that she used the names, creating characters to go with them.)

The flap also says that she visited a museum where she “marveled at images of Arctic animals in Inuit clothes and felt a door had opened.”

My colleague, Theresa Seidel, addresses problems with the story (and the flaps) in her open letter to Jan Brett. She points out that in The Three Snow Bears, we have another book in which an author/illustrator puts Native clothing on animals, effectively de-humanizing American Indians.

Yes---Beatrix Potter did that in her Peter Rabbit stories, and nobody is making a fuss over that, but there is a difference. 

The humanity of the people Potter’s bunnies represent is not questioned. Those people are recognized as people. Regular people. Not people (like indigenous peoples of the US and Canada) who are adored and romanticized. And, they're not a people who most others think vanished. Some people might put Princess Di on a pedestal and swoon over who she was, and they might swoon over some part of English culture, but they don’t do that to all of the English people. 

In contrast, far too many people think we (American Indians, Inuits, First Nations) no longer exist. We (or rather, some semblance of who we were/are) do, however, make frequent appearances in fiction, as mascots on sports fields, as inspiration for troops whose helicopters and battleships and missile’s named after Native tribes, and on products from tobacco to automobiles to foodstuffs. For too many, we are an idea, not a living, breathing people whose kids go to the same schools as yours do.

Brett had good intentions. She was inspired by the people, their art, their world. And she she wrote and illustrated this book that subtly and directly affirms problematic notions of who we are. It is a beautifully illustrated book. (As a work of low fantasy, we must suspend our disbelief so we buy into the polar bears living as humans do. Look closely, though... The polar bears wear their parkas when they go out, but leave their boots behind.)

Aloo-ki is surprised to come upon “the biggest igloo she had ever seen.” That’s worth a challenge, because it suggests that Aloo-ki is accustomed to seeing smaller igloos. Problem is, most people think that igloos are cute dwellings, about the size of dog houses. They’re actually quite large. If you saw the film, Atanarjuat (Fast Runner), you saw just how big igloos are. (Go to the movie’s website and view the galleries http://www.atanarjuat.com/galleries/movie.php).

In sum, Brett’s book is pretty to look at, a trinket, a decoration, but Native peoples are not trinkets or decorations. 

Turning now, to Alexie’s book…

Alexie is Spokane. He grew up on his reservation. His book is largely autobiographical. It is HIS story, his LIVED story, that he gives us in Absolutely True Diary. He doesn’t retell a traditional story. He gives us a story of a modern day Native boy, living life in these times, not some far-off, exotic place, distant in time and location. His story is note cute or charming. It is gritty.

We can agree that children who read picture books have different needs than those who read chapter books. But it IS possible to write picture books about present day Native kids. Native authors who’ve written precisely this kind of book are Joseph Bruchac, Joy Harjo, and Cynthia Leitich Smith.

Today, Diane Chen (a blogger at School Libray Journal) wrote about the need for discussion and growth, so that the children’s book world (and American society) can move beyond the place we are STILL at, where problematic books about American Indians are written, published, favorably reviewed, bought, and read by kids across the country.

We can do better, but the Jan Brett’s and their editors, their publishers, and reviewers, teachers, librarians, parents, booksellers, all have to listen to our concerns. This is not, from my point of view, an issue of racism. It is an issue of not-knowing, and being unwilling to admit errors.

With a new year upon us, can we give it a try?

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An Open Letter to Jan Brett

Below is a letter to Jan Brett regarding her new book Three Snow Bears. The letter is written by Theresa Seidel.
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An Open Letter to Jan Brett

I met you over twenty years ago when my daughter was in kindergarten and you visited her school during a young author conference. I became an instant admirer of your books. They are always beautifully done and your work as an illustrator is second to none. The use of borders to tell “the rest of the story” is a feature I always look forward to seeing. Your joy for writing shows through when you work with children.

As an Indigenous woman and a worker in a public library, I find your newest book, The Three Snow Bears, bothersome on many levels. I don’t feel honored when someone not of a culture appropriates elements of an indigenous culture for their own gain.

My red flag was:

I first saw the book when a mother and daughter picked it up and the mother said that she could use it to read as a “Native American” story to her daughter’s class. After reading the cover flaps of the book, I could see why. You do not claim to be Native American. You had traveled to Baffin Island to study the people and animals. You go on to explain how you looked at the faces of the children and got the character, Aloo-ki. The book is not a Native American story. It is a story of the three bears and Goldilocks done with an Inuit twist.

You went to the museum and studied the displays and artwork. You say that you saw traditional clothing on animal artwork in a museum and that was the inspiration for your book. I do understand that the people you visited have this depicted in THEIR artwork. But it belongs to them. They shared their culture with you. Did they do this with the intention that you would take it and make it into a book?

I was holding your book and seeing snow bears wearing traditional Inuit clothing. For hundreds of years Native people have been treated as less than human. This book immediately brings to mind another book done to “honor” Native people, Ten Little Rabbits,” by Virginia Grossman. Ten Little Rabbits is just a remake of Ten Little Indians with rabbits wearing Native attire. Depicting minority populations as animals in children’s books has long been used as a de-humanizing tactic.

I could not believe that you, Jan Brett, would do this, so I turned to your website for more information. Upon looking at the mural page, I had my answer. This page describes the outfits on each of the bears and tells about those items of clothing in Inuit life. I am not Inuit so I cannot speak to whether the information presented is accurate. The Goldilocks character’s outfit is not mentioned, but rather how she drives a sled team.

Another concern that I have about the book is that Aloo-ki steals boots. The children ages 3-6, to whom I read, would catch this almost immediately. They know that you don’t take something that belongs to another and keep it without asking. Aloo-ki took the boots not because she needed them, but because they were prettier than the boots she was wearing.

This book could have been nicely done without a Native twist. I am really trying to understand your motivation for using an Inuit theme for this book. Do you feel you are promoting a culture by showcasing it to the world? Did the people you visited ask you to do so; or did you assume that by them sharing culture with you that you had the right to use it? Are you going to give back to the community something for appropriating their culture?

Is this something you will continue to do as you travel? I did have some qualms after reading your {Jan Brett} book “Honey…Honey…Lion” as it took a story from an Indigenous culture to use. It was nice to see money from this book supporting a local foundation. Does giving back to the locals after cultural appropriation make it okay?

Here are the criteria I used for judging The Three Snow Bears:

Is the book written by a Native author or with a Native author?

Is it using another culture to gain financial rewards?

Is the book depicting Native people as less than human?

Could you remove the Native aspects and still have a good book? If so, what was the motivation to include them?

Is the culture being portrayed correctly?

Please explain how this book should make an Indigenous person feel “honored.”

Respectfully,

Theresa Seidel

Note: I did send a letter to Jan Brett on her “contact the author” portion of her web page, so that she could reply to me in private. She did not reply to my letter.