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
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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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