Dear Mr. Goble: Questions for Paul Goble about THE GIRL WHO LOVED WILD HORSES

Paul Goble's The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses was published in 1978. It won the prestigious Caldecott Medal.

Due to the popularity of his style, and the Caldecott, too, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses has been printed and reprinted lots of times. The copy I'm looking at right now (dated 2001) indicates I have one that was in the 12th reprinting.

As we saw in the discussion of Robert Lawson's They Were Strong and Good, books can be revised, with problematic language removed in the process.

I'm wondering if Paul Goble or an editor at Simon & Schuster might do some revising of The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses?

Well---maybe not revising, but an addition to the book. By that, I mean information about the story itself. I mean a source note!

Let's look at his book, using criteria developed by Betsy Hearne in her "Cite the Source: Reducing Cultural Chaos in Picture Books, Part 1" article. It was published in 1993 in School Library Journal. Betsy called her criteria "A Source Note Countdown."

Before I start, I'll say I find the book as problematic as the other "Native" book that won the Caldecott in the 70's: Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun. The subtitle for McDermott's book is A Pueblo Tale. There are nineteen different pueblos... which one does he mean? Does he think we're all the same? What is the source for the story he tells? Does McDermott know that the pueblos in the northern, mountainous part of New Mexico are not the same as the ones located in more southern areas of the state, where the geography is not as mountainous? There are significant differences, in fact, even within a single pueblo, from one society or clan to the next one...  Without providing a source, McDermott introduces the chaos Betsy points to by being non-specific. An elementary school teacher who chooses to use his book to supplement teaching about Pueblos people heads down a rather risky road...

Course, his book---and Goble's, too---were written in the 1970s...  Because of that, some might argue that it isn't fair to judge them by today's standards. Still, given their status as Caldecott books, maybe we can ask them to be updated with a solid source note...

In her source note countdown, Betsy writes about five ways an author can acknowledge his or her sources. Worst case is #5, "The nonexistent source note." Next is #4, "The background-as-source-note." Number 3 is "The fine-print source note." At #2 is "The well-made source note." And the best note, #1, is "The model source note."

In Betsy's countdown, the worst note is "the nonexistent source note."  In this case, the subtitle or jacket copy makes a vague claim that is, as Betsy writes, "faithfully picked up and authoritatively echoed in the Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication statement." To the right is the cover of The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. No subtitle. The text on the jacket book flap, however, says "In simple words and brilliant paintings that sweep and stampede across his pages, Paul Goble tells of a Native American girl's love of horses."  And here's the CIP info:

Summary: Though she is fond of her people, a girl prefers to live among the wild horses where she is truly happy and free. [1. Fairy tales. 2. Indians of North America-Fiction. 3. Horses-Fiction] 

I'm guessing the Library of Congress cataloger used the jacket copy to assign the book its 2nd category (Indians of North America-Fiction). There isn't an author or source note anywhere in the book. The only information we are given is the Library of Congress summary. No "background as source note" or "fine-print source note" or "well-made" or "model" note. In interviews, Goble says he does extensive research. So...

----------------
April 3, 2011 

Dear Mr. Goble, 

Can you tell your editor at Simon and Schuster that you'd like to add a well-made source note to this book? One that tell us the specific source (or sources) you used to tell this story? Can you give us a description of the cultural context in which this story was/is told? And, can you tell us what you've done to change it, and why you've changed it as you did (if you did)? 

Thanks,
Debbie Reese

(I'll send this on to Simon and Schuster, and to Mr. Goble, too, if I can find a way to contact him. I'll let you know if I hear back from either one.)

Update, June 11, 2014:
I did receive a reply to my letter. In it, Mr. Goble said that I could not quote him. The gist of his short letter is that publishers cannot afford to add pages like the one I requested. I find that answer curious because his later books include that information.

Nodelman on WHERE THE GREAT HAWK FLIES

In 2007, I published Beverly Slapin's review of Liza Ketchum's Where the Great Hawk Flies. Today I'm pointing you to Perry Nodelman's review of the book.

Reading his review made me laugh aloud. He references several other novels he analyzed for his chapter in Home Words: Discourses of Children's Literature in Canada (I highly recommend his chapter, "At Home on Native Land: A Non-Aboriginal Canadian Scholar Discusses Aboriginality and Property in Canadian Double-Focalized Novels for Young Adults").

Perry writes:

And the novels almost always resolve the dispute by giving the disputed thing or place over to the care of anyone of any race or background who adopts what are presented as being aboriginal values–which usually are some version of a new-agey ecological spirituality about respect for the planet and all creatures on it, and a dislike for fatcat capitalists, factories and frozen entrees.  

That hits my funny bone! There's a lot of people like that...

He also writes about how, in Ketchum's novel, the hawk (from the title) always appears at key moments. Those of you who watch or study film are well-acquainted with the hawk's cry...  It signifies "Indian" just as much as faux-Indian-music does.   

Seriously, though, Perry writes about multiculturalism in the novel. About the impulse to create a multicultural world that is safe, that feels the need to "defang" (Perry's word) aboriginal culture, making it less authentic, and therefore less dangerous, so it can be something everyone can embrace. 

Most everyone wants to think they're not racist, that they embrace others, value diversity, etc.  But what is it they're after? For too many people, it is a superficial understanding that ends up being window-dressing.

I, for example, don't want people to embrace traditional Native stories and reject objections that American Indian scholars or tribes put forth regarding appropriation and misrepresentation of Native stories. The stories feel safe. Thinking about appropriation and misrepresentation of the stories is POLITICS, and that isn't safe.  To "defang" the objection, a writer will talk about how stories are always changed when retold, no matter who tells them. Or, the writer will talk about freedom of expression... 

"Multiracial" identity and American Indians

The US Census released 2010 demographic data a few days ago. Among the data being pointed to in articles and essays is that "...American Indians and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are the most likely to report being of more than once race. Blacks and whites are the least likely." That excerpt appears in the New York Times, in the March 24, 2011 article by Susan Saulny.

It suggests that more American Indians claim more than one race than was the case in the past, that there is more mixing than ever before. I don't doubt that, but let's hit the pause button...

I'm tribally enrolled with Nambe Pueblo. I grew up there. My daughter and I, like my parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc., live our identity as Indians of Nambe Pueblo.

I teach at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. In every class I teach, I've got a handful of students who say they have a great grandparent who was Native. They don't know what tribe that ancestor was, and, they usually have only a vague idea of what it might mean to be Native. Most of them have no idea of Native Nations, of Native sovereignty, of being on a tribal census, what treaties mean, that dances might be sacred...   A great many of them romanticize an Indian identity based on popular culture and (sadly) biased teachings in school. Some of them manufacture that identity, putting it on in the form of, for example, a bone choker. They mean no harm. In fact, they wear such things with great pride. But! They don't live a specific Native Nation identity.

Yet, many of them check a box on school enrollment forms, and, likely on the U.S. Census, that says they're part Indian. And so, the statistics are kind of... skewed.

A few months ago, the Times ran another article in which college students reported being mixed, some of them with Native heritage, but that none of those distinct identities mattered.

Identity matters for those of us who are raised Indian. We work very hard at maintaining our nationhood and our sovereignty, and, we work to protect the integrity of our traditions from being exploited by people who don't understand them... 

The students interviewed for that Times article mean no harm when they say their Indian identity doesn't matter. It doesn't matter---to them. But it does to me, and it does to Native Nations. The students' well-meaning embrace of a mixed identity, in effect, obscures a lot, and in that obscurity, it does do harm. It contributes to the lack of understanding of who American Indians are...  And it takes the US down a merry melting pod road where we all hold hands and smile in ignorance.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is ignorance.

You don't have to be ignorant. You can learn a lot about American Indians, and know us---and maybe your own ancestry---for who we were and are, rather than some abstract stereotypical notion you've been carrying around. 

Spend some time on American Indians in Children's Literature, learning about who we are and what we care about. Read our newspapers! Check out Indian Country Today. Read Mark Trahant's columns there, and see how ICT covers mascot stories. Listen to our radio stations! Start with National Native News. Did you know we have Tribal Colleges? And a journal called Tribal College Journal that you can read online? There's a lot to know!

"Settler ponies" and buffaloes in MY LITTLE PONY (new TV series)

I did not know that there is a new My Little Pony television show being aired... 

I watched a segment today, prompted to do so by reader, DV, who told me about a recent episode called "Over a Barrel."


You can see the whole episode on YouTube... This is the second half:



In it, the ponies visit a western town of ponies that have planted apple orchards all around the pony town. The orchards are on the lands belonging to the buffaloes. The ponies did not know the land belonged to the buffaloes.

The buffaloes use that land "for stampeding." It is their "sacred tradition" to stampede. The buffaloes want the ponies to take the trees down.

The ponies say they've worked hard to get those trees planted and growing, and therefore do not want to take them down.

Neither group backs down, so, they have a fight at high noon.

The town ponies are led by a sheriff; the buffaloes have a chief. In the fight, the ponies hit the buffaloes with pies that knock the buffaloes out. The chief is barreling down on the sheriff. He is hit by a pie and everyone thinks he is dead. Sad music plays. But, apple pie filling drizzles down to his mouth, and he wakes up. He loves the pie.

They settle the dispute. The ponies keep the orchard and land. In return, the buffaloes get apple pies and apples.

Sound familiar?

Peter Sieruta on Laura Adams Armer's WATERLESS MOUNTAIN

Peter Sieruta publishes the blog, Collecting Children's Books. On Friday, March 25, 2011, he wrote about Laura Adams Armer's Waterless Mountain. Published in 1931, it won the Newbery Medal. He wondered what I think of it.

Some time ago, a reader wrote to me, also asking about Waterless Mountain.

So.... I went out to the library today and got a copy. For now, you can see the conversation Peter and I are having in the comments section of his post.

"Wounded Bird" in RANGO, and a note about Johnny Depp playing Tonto

Several people have written to ask me if I've seen Rango.

I haven't, but I just came across a critique of the character, Wounded Bird, at the Drawing on Indians blog where blogger Stephen Bridenstine says "Wounded Bird draws his inspiration directly from the scores of Indian depictions in countless Hollywood Westerns."

The image here is from Bridenstine's site. See the bone choker? (Imagine me groaning.) Bone chokers have become one of the things anyone (and anything) who wants to be marked as "Indian" wears (or is shown wearing.)

Johnny Depp does the voice for Rango in that film. Depp has gotten a lot of press lately because he's playing the part of Tonto (the Lone Ranger's Indian sidekick) in a remake of the Lone Ranger. Depp says he's seen stereotypical portrayals of American Indians in films and plans to do something different in his portrayal. I wonder what it'll be? Depp was in Dead Man with Gary Farmer. I wonder if he learned anything from Gary? For those who don't know Gary's work, watch him in Smoke Signals.

News on Scholastic's "Dear America" series

Are you a fan of the Dear America series of historical fiction diaries published by Scholastic?

Many of the students in my classes at the University of Illinois remember them fondly. And many are disillusioned when we spend time studying Ann Rinaldi's book in the series. That book is My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, A Sioux Girl. Several years ago, I co-wrote an extended review of the book. Today, I reproduced that review for those of you who are having trouble locating it in the Way Back Machine (Internet Archive).

The news about the series is that Scholastic is relaunching it.

"Relaunching" means they're adding new books to the Dear America series, and, they're reissuing five of the older books. Rinaldi's is not among the five, and neither is the one about the Navajo Long Walk. I'm glad Scholastic decided not to reissue those two. I haven't read the five, so can't say (yet) whether or not the Native content in them (if there is any) is accurate.

For information about the launch, see "Fresh Approaches" at School Library Journal's website.