A good starting point to introduce the legacy of tribal termination.
In 1954, the Umpqua tribe was terminated by the government.
Unable to afford their land on the former Umpqua Grand Ronde reservation in Oregon, 10-year-old Regina Petit’s father, who is Umpqua, decides to sign up for the Indian Relocation Program and move the entire family to Los Angeles. Regina and her little sister, Peewee, spend the summer adjusting to life in their multicultural South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, where they befriend black siblings Keith and Addie and Cuban brothers Anthony and Philip. In this new environment, Regina is forced to confront the dominant ideas about her Indian identity through what the other kids have learned at school and from the 1950s TV show The Lone Ranger. A neighborhood game of Cowboys and Indians defies the outcome Regina played on the rez, where the Indians win. The children experience a racist attack while trick-or-treating when white teenagers throw eggs and use the N-word. (The book leaves Regina puzzling over this incident without addressing the history or implications of the slur.) McManis and Sorell produce a poignant family story of the impact termination had on the thousands of Native Americans who left reservations in order to survive. Using a supporting cast of color to reflect distorted stereotypes back at them, however, has the effect of eliding the implication of white culture in their origins.
A good starting point to introduce the legacy of tribal termination. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62014-839-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Tu Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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