Cheryl Minnema's HUNGRY JOHNNY

A significant component of the We Need Diverse Books campaign is regarding the authorship of books. For AICL, that means books written and illustrated by Native authors. In the midst of the We Need Diverse Books campaign, I received a copy of Hungry Johnny. Here's the cover:

The author of Hungry Johnny is Cheryl Minnema. She's Ojibwe, and so is the illustrator, Wesley Ballinger. And the story? It is about an Ojibwe kid. Named Johnny. Who is--as the title suggests--hungry!

When the book opens, Johnny is outside playing, but his tummy growls. He's hungry, and heads inside where his grandma is making wild rice. He spies that plate of sweet rolls on the table and makes a beeline for it, but she tells him "Bekaa, these are for the community feast." The word 'bekaa' is in bold on the page. It is one of several Ojibwe words in Minnema's book. Bekaa, by the way, means 'wait.'

As the cover demonstrates, Johnny lives in a modern home. His grandma, in jeans, sweater, and a ball cap, is at an electric stove, and as Johnny plods to another room, we see hardwood floors and photographs on the wall. When his grandmother tells him it is time to go, he leaps off the couch. He wants to eat, eat, eat! As they drive to the community center, he sings "I like to eat, eat, eat. I like to eat, eat, eat."

I've not said anything about a word that appears in the two paragraphs directly above this one. Community. There is a community feast at the community center. Such gatherings and spaces are common across the U.S. and Canada. It is one of the many ways that Native people maintain our traditions and relationships with each other.

At the center, Johnny has to wait again. An elder says a "very l-o-n-g prayer." Perfect! That is exactly what happens. As a kid, it seemed to me forever, too, waiting for elders to finish praying. But, wait we did, and so does Johnny. I gotta share a photo of that page:

See the elder's vest? That particular page highlights Ballinger's connections to his Ojibwe community. That is Ojibwe beadwork--the very kind that Minnema is known for! Here's a photo of some of her exquisite work:

Back to the story...

Elders eat first, so Johnny has to wait. His grandma waits with him, telling him to be patient. He wonders why she's not eating with the elders, and she explains she is a "baby elder" that is "too young to be old and too old to be young."

When Johnny and his grandma are finally at the table, he is crestfallen because the plate of rolls is empty. It is, however, a feast, and another plate of them is brought to the table. Just then, Johnny sees Katherine (an elder) arrive, and calls her over to take his seat. He isn't glum in calling to her. He understands that elders receive special treatment.

Course, this is a community with elders who pay attention to young ones, so, Katherine invites him to sit on her lap. Johnny finally gets his sweet roll.

There's a lot that I like about Hungry Johnny. The Ojibwe words, the teachings imparted, and, Ballinger's art. In 2000, Simms Taback won the Caldecott Medal for Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. I was teaching undergraduates that year in the College of Education. The Jewish students in my class pored over it, pointing to things in the illustrations that affirmed Jewish culture. I didn't notice them, but the students did, and it mattered to them a great deal. That's what Hungry Johnny is like for me, and, no doubt, for Native children who go to community feasts. I imagine Hungry Johnny will be much loved by Ojibwe children who will spot more than I did. What a treat!

Hungry Johnny is published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. A new book, its copyright is 2014. I highly recommend it. When you (parent/teacher/librarian) reads it to a child, you could also pull out a map and show them where Minnema and Ballinger are from: Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Art Coulson's THE CREATOR'S GAME: A STORY OF BAAGA'ADOWE/LACROSSE

Note from Debbie on Nov 28, 2023: Due to my concerns over Art Coulson's claim of being Cherokee, I am no longer recommending his books.  

Wow! I just blazed through Art Coulson's The Creator's Game: A Story of Baaga'adowe/Lacrosse. 

Coulson has a way with words. English ones, and Ojibwe ones, too, as he tells this story about Travis, a sixth grade Ojibwe boy who is starting out playing lacrosse.

Set in the present day, Travis lives with his mom and grandmother. He's struggling with the game and bummed each day after practice. But his grandma has confidence in him.

So does his grandfather, who passed away some time back, but comes to Travis each night. His grandfather was a strong and swift lacrosse player that everyone called Hummingbird.

There's a terrific blend here. Coulson's storytelling delivers nuggets of info about the ways that Ojibwe people play lacrosse, and, the way that Cherokee's play it.

Oh yeah--Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Dream Country figures in the story, too.

Perfectly paced, The Creator's Game is a terrific book. I think I'll give my copy to the Pima boys around the corner. I suspect they'll like it, and I'm going to send a librarian a link to this review. Just a few days ago, she wrote to me, asking for recommendations for a 4th grade reluctant reader. I suggested Joe Bruchac's Children of the Longhouse, which coincidentally, Coulson includes in his list of books for further reading.

Illustrated by Robert DesJarlait, The Creator's Game is published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. You can get a copy from Birchbark Books. And check out Indian Country Today's interview with Coulson.

ORIGINAL LOCAL: INDIGENOUS FOODS, STORIES, AND RECIPES FROM THE UPPER MIDWEST, by Heid E. Erdrich

Heid Erdrich's Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest is a treat! I mean that literally (reading the recipes makes my mouth water!) and spiritually, too.

The stories she tells in the book take me to my childhood and time spent gathering plants with my grandmother, or, helping her with her garden. To do this gardening, Gram would wear old work shirts that belonged to my grandfather. They kept the sun off her arms, but there was another reason to wear them.... Gophers! See, she irrigated her garden with water from the 'high land' ditch. We'd walk up to the high land, 'turn down the water,' and walk back down to the garden, waiting for the water to meander down the bone dry bed of the ditch to her rows of corn and beans and squash and peas and cucumbers.

Sometimes, the water didn't get to the garden. When the water didn't arrive, we'd walk alongside the ditch till we got to the gopher hole that we knew we'd find. She'd rip pieces off of her shirt and stuff them, along with rocks and sticks, into the gopher hole. It was annoying as heck to her, but remembering those times gardening with my grandmother gives me cause to smile, and to--in effect--nourish my soul in the ways that Erdrich's stories do, too.

"A recipe is a story."

 "A recipe" Erdrich tells us, "is a story" (p. 12). That line perfectly captures what you'll find in her book.  Some of the stories in Erdrich's book are specific to gatherings with her family and friends. I especially like "The First Hunt and the Last" on page 84 and 85. On page 85 is her brother's recipe for venison stew. Some stories are traditional ones, and still others are about activism. Winona LaDuke, well known for her activism, has a piece in the book about gathering wild rice. She ends her piece by pointing to a company in California that has recently patented wild rice, which essentially put the Ojibwe people in a battle over who owns foods and medicines. For more on that, see LaDuke's "Ricekeepers: A Struggle to Protect Biodiversity and a Native American Way of Life" in the July/August 2007 issue of Orion Magazine. 

As you turn the pages of Original Local, there are lot of names you'll recognize if you read the work of Native writers and scholars. Louise Erdrich, for example. One of her recipes is in the book. Brenda Child is here, too. The recipes and photographs and stories make this cookbook an absolute delight. You can get an autographed copy from Birchbark Books. 

Horn Book interviews Louise Erdrich

Head over to Horn Book to read Martha Parravano's interview with Louise Erdrich!

Martha asked her about the two men who kidnap Chickadee (the protagonist in Chickadee). Though the two are kidnappers, they are also the comic relief in the story. They're goofy as can be! Erdrich talks a little about them in the interview, and she also talks about the next book in the Birchbark House series...

LE: The next book, a twin to Chickadee, is titled Makoons. That book is going to be very personal for me because for the first time I will be writing from the living memory of my relatives. I was fortunate enough as a child to remember my great-grandfather, The Kingfisher, who lived into his nineties and had been part of some of the last buffalo hunts along the Milk River in Montana. So what I will be describing has incredible resonance for me.

Makoons will be the fifth book. Chickadee just came out, and it is outstanding. Have you read it yet? And have you ordered it for your library? I hope your answer is "yes" and "I ordered several copies!"

(Photo credit: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/01/25/movable_feats/)

Louise Erdrich's CHICKADEE

With immense satisfaction and a deep sigh, I read the last words in Louise Erdrich's Chickadee and then gazed at the cover. Chickadee is the fourth book in her Birchbark House series, launched in 1999.

My copy arrived yesterday afternoon and I immediately began reading--but not racing--through Chickadee, because it is written with such beauty, power, and elegance that I knew I'd reach the end and wish I could go on, reading about Omakayas and her eight-year-old twin boys, Chickadee and Makoons.

There was delight as Erdrich reintroduced Omakayas and Old Tallow, and when she introduced a man in a black robe, I felt a knot in my belly as I wondered how Erdrich would tell her young readers about missionaries.

The sadness I felt reading about smallpox in Birchbark House gripped me, too, as did the anger at those who called us savage and pagan.

Resilience, though, and the strength of family and community is woven throughout Chickadee.  I'll provide a more in-depth analysis later. For now, I want to bask in the words and stories that Louise Erdrich gives to us Chickadee and throughout the Birchbark House series.

You can order a signed copy of Chickadee from Birchbark Books. And if you don't have the first three books in the series, order them, too.

AWESIINYENSAG, Wiigwaas Press, and the Minnesota's Best Read for 2011

This is terrific news! Awesiinyensag, a book published by Heid and Louise Erdrich's Wiigwaas Press, was selected as Minnesota's Best Read for 2011. That means the book will represent the state of Minnesota at the National Book Festival in Washington D.C.

As you might glean from reading the title, the text is not in English. Here's the blurb:

Awesiinyensag presents original stories, written in Anishinaabemowin, that delight readers and language learners with the antics of animals who playfully deal with situations familiar to children in all cultures. Suitable for all ages, this book can be read aloud, assigned to classes, shared at language tables, gifted to elders, and enjoyed by those curious about the language and all who love Anishinaabemowin.

Authored by a team of twelve and richly illustrated by Ojibwe artist Wesley Ballinger, Awesiinyensag will be the first in a series created to encourage learning Anishinaabemowin, the language of Ojibwe people.

The book will provide a challenge to those of us who do not speak Anishinaabemowin, but if you've got students in your classrooms or school who do speak that language, it will be a treasure. Or, if you've got students who loved the language they found in Erdrich's Birchbark House, you could get Awesiinyensag for them.  Get it at Birchbark Books. Among the authors included are Nancy Jones, Eugene Stillday, Rose Tainter, Anna Gibbs, Marlene Stately, Anton Treuer, Keller Paap, Lisa LaRonge, Michael Sullivan, John Nichols, Lucia Bonacci, and Heather Fairbanks.

An aside: On her Facebook page, Heid Erdrich noted that when you search Google using Awesiinyensag, Google asks "Did you mean: Awesomeness." For a lot of us, AWESOME perfectly captures the book and the press, too.   

Niimiwin - Everyone Dance

A few years ago the Fond du Lac Head Start program published a terrific board book called Boozhoo: Come Play With Us. Set at the headstart, the book consists of photographs of Native children at play. Text on each page is in Ojibwe and English.

This year they published another board book. This one is Niimiwin - Everyone Dance. I've ordered it. What I've read about it so far is that it is about pow wows. I look forward to getting it! If its anything like Boozhoo, it'll be on my list of Top Ten Books for Preschool-Aged Children.  You can order a copy from the Fond du Lac Head Start for $5.95. Here's the cover:

Erdrich's PORCUPINE YEAR in SLJ's "Battle of the (Kids') Books"

School Library Journal launched their first annual "Battle of the (Kids') Books" today. Among the contenders for "the Baddest Book of Them All" is Louise Erdrich's The Porcupine Year. The judges selected sixteen books they deem "the very best" published in 2008.

I'm not at all sure how this will work. Take a look at the bracket. Porcupine Year is matched up with The Hunger Games.

NOTE: Hunger Games is not about King Arthur as previously said here. That was an error on my part, pointed out in a comment (below). Hunger Games is "a gripping story set in a postapocalyptic world where a replacement for the United States demands a tribute from each of its territories: two children to be used as gladiators in a televised fight to the death" according to the Publisher's Weekly review.

According to info at SLJ, the pairings are random. Forgive my lack of sports knowledge. Is that how the Sweet Sixteen is done? Random?

So... in that bracket, it looks like author Ellen Wittlinger will choose between Porcupine Year and The Hunger Games. Reading through the blogosphere, there's a lot of cheering going on for this Battle of the (Kids') Books competition. There is some resistance, too. One blogger writes that the same books are getting more attention, that there are other books that could benefit from attention.

I'm glad Louise's book is included. It is definitely a terrific read. If you want a signed copy, order one from her store, Birchbark Books.

Chad Solomon's THE ADVENTURES OF RABBIT AND BEAR PAWS

[Note: This review may not be published elsewhere without written permission from its author, Beverly Slapin. Copyright 2008 by Beverly Slapin. All rights reserved.]

Solomon, Chad (Ojibwe), and Christopher Meyer, The Adventures of Rabbit and Bear Paws. Little Spirit Bear Productions, 2008, color art by Chad Solomon, grades 3-up

Modeled on the popular Asterix Adventures, these Ojibwe-centric graphic novels—two, so far—are set in eighteenth Century colonized North America. The protagonists are Ojibwe brothers dealing, in their inimitable ways, with their land-hungry new neighbors. Rabbit is a shrewd, cunning little guy, a headstrong kid who often confuses bravery with bravado. His younger brother, Bear Paws, is way larger and stronger, kind of gullible, and always ready to pull Rabbit out of a scheme-gone-awry. The two are good, likable kids, sprinkling themselves with spirit powder to transform into animals, trying to get out of trouble, trying to get out of chores, and generally remembering the old stories and the traditional lessons they impart. In “The Sugar Bush,” our young heroes encounter a troop of bumbling British soldiers who don’t speak Ojibwe and have no idea how to live on the land. In “The Voyageurs,” Rabbit and Bear Paws embark on what might be the single strangest journey in the history of the fur trade.

Young readers will enjoy following the adventures of Solomon’s and Meyer’s energetic young characters, and the joking and ironic word-plays between the Ojibwe adults and children and animals. Solomon’s appealing artwork is uncluttered, with light, bright colors and minimal inking; the font is a good size for the dialogue and the panels are easy to follow. And, no matter what happens, Rabbit and Bear Paws’ breechclouts stay remarkably in place.—Beverly Slapin

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The Adventures of Rabbit and Bear Paws is available from Oyate.

Cynthia Leitich Smith interviews Drew Hayden Taylor

Click on over to Cynsations to read Cynthia's interview of Drew Hayden Taylor. He wrote a young adult novel that I came across last March. I've yet to blog it, but do recommend it, especially for fans of vampire stories. His novel is called The Night Wanderer.

In the interview, he says:

"...I took a European legend and indigenized it.

Simply put, its the story about an Ojibway man who, 350 years ago, made his way to Europe and was bitten by a vampire. He spent all those years wandering Europe, feeling homesick but unwilling to return as the monster he'd become. But finally, unable to stop himself, he makes his way back to where his village once was in Canada, and it's now a First Nations community. He takes up residency at a bed-and-breakfast, in the basement apartment. In that same house is a sixteen-year-old girl, Tiffany, who is having problems with her white boyfriend, father, and herself. Eventually, both their lives intertwine, and things happen!"

He indigenized a European legend. That word, indigenize, has been coming into greater use in recent years. I've written an article called "Indigenizing Children's Literature." Published this month in the electronic journal called Journal of Language and Literacy, the abstract reads:

In this article the author situates the analysis of two popular children’s books in theoretical frameworks emerging from American Indian Studies. Using a new historicist lens, she discusses Anne Rockwell’s (1999) Thanksgiving Day and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s (1935/1971) Little House on the Prairie and suggests that these books function as obstacles for the understanding of the Other in American and global society.

I welcome your critique of the article, and suggest you read Drew's novel. If you want to learn more about him, visit his website.

Slapin review of Erdrich's THE PORCUPINE YEAR

[Note: This review may not be used elsewhere without written permission of its author, Beverly Slapin. Copyright 2008 by Beverly Slapin. All rights reserved.]

Erdrich, Louise (Ojibwe), The Porcupine Year, b/w illustrations by the author. HarperCollins, 2008, grades 4-up

It is 1852, and Omakayas, the little girl we have come to know and love, is 12 winters old—“somewhere between a child and a woman—a person ready to test her intelligence, her hungers. A dreamer, who did not yet know her limits. A hunter, like her brother, who was beginning to possess the knowledge of all that moved and breathed. A friend who did not know how far her love might extend…. A girl who’d come to know something of her strength and who wanted challenge, and would get it, in the years of her family’s exile from their original home…”

Her little brother, Pinch (soon to be called “Quill”), has determined (all by himself) that the little gaag, the baby porcupine he’s convinced Omakayas not to kill for soup, has been given to him as his “medicine animal.” In this “porcupine year,” as it will come to be known, the ever-encroaching chimookomanag, the white people, have forced the large extended family to embark on a perilous journey away from their beloved home, the Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker. As they travel north toward Lac du Bois to reunite with Mama’s sister’s family, there are hard decisions to make, the enemy Bwaanag (Dakota) to avoid, raging fires to escape, lost chimookomanag children to take care of, treachery that leaves them near starvation, and the heroic death of a tough-as-leather old woman whom Omakayas had thought was “unkillable.”

This porcupine year is indeed challenging, and another writer might have mired this book in tragedy and unrelenting sorrow. But Erdrich does not abide maudlin drama: here, children can be silly, parents can overreact, grandparents can allow space to learn, and baby porcupines (especially those destined for soup) can be really, really cute.

Omakayas is a loved and treasured member of her family, growing into a strong young woman with a clear mind and a heart open to all that awaits her. She knows that nothing will ever take the place of her original home, but she will learn to love the new place her family now inhabits: land, culture and community are still intact. The Porcupine Year, as its predecessors, The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence, will resonate with young readers long after the last page has been turned.—Beverly Slapin

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Note from Debbie: If you've got a choice, get Erdrich's books from Oyate, a non-profit organization that does a lot of terrific work that benefits all children.

Louise Erdrich's THE PORCUPINE YEAR

Today, Elizabeth Bird (a blogger at School Library Journal), posted her review of Louise Erdrich's The Porcupine Year. It is Erdrich's third book in a series that began with The Birchbark House.

Bird clearly loves the book. I don't know if she posts a live countdown for every book she reviews, but there is one there for the moment when The Porcupine Year hits the shelves on September 2nd.

Earlier this year I listened to Erdrich read from her new novel, The Plague of Doves. It came out in April and is in its third printing. The story she tells is based on the lynching of three American Indians in 1897 in North Dakota. At the 2006 New Yorker Festival she read aloud the story "The Plague of Doves" that would become the novel. If you want to hear that reading, click here.

I bring up her reading here because today, months after I heard her read, those voices are still with me. A gifted writer, she is also an outstanding reader. I'd love to hear her read aloud The Porcupine Year! Like Elizabeth, I was taken with the dialog.

And, as with her first book, Erdrich gives us an honest portrayal of peoples in conflict. In her books, there is none of the savage melodrama that Wilder uses in her series. The world might be a better place if we replaced every copy of Wilder's Little House on the Prairie with Erdrich's series. In Erdrich, children see human and humane, fully developed Native characters whose culture is in conflict with those who want what they have. Thoughtful and thought-provoking.