Indigo's Bookshelf: Voices of Native Youth

Usually, when a teacher or librarian knows you like sports and they are trying to encourage you to read, they'll suggest books by Matt Christopher. Not until I looked him up did I realize the man had been dead for years and "the family continues to oversee productions of books by Matt Christopher created by various writers and illustrators, treating the name as a trademark." To be honest (no shade) that's how the books read. That's why it was amazing when I came across Art Coulson's (Cherokee) great book, THE CREATOR'S GAME: A STORY OF BAAGA'ADOWE/LACROSSE! Another subject I like to read is relationships between generations of Indigenous men. There aren't too many books like that. (I picked a very different one, HIDDEN ROOTS , by Joseph Bruchac for the HALL OF FAME before.) Of course, I'm glad to see a mom and grandma in this story too. Sixth grader Travis plays lacrosse, but he's not very good at it and he hates to practice and loo...

I have a cat, a stripedy cat with tickling whiskers and green electric eyes. She has the softest fur in the world. When I pet her she purrs as if she has a drum near her heart. Recently, my mom bought me a big stack of library books while I was in a treatment center. Current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's only picture book, THE GOOD LUCK CAT, was among them. It is a first edition from 2000, the year I was born. Mom said, "I don't know why I never knew about this book before. I wish we had it when you were young." There is only one copy in our Library system--I am glad they don't just weed OOP books. But this book should be available to everyone. So I'm joining Dr. Debbie Reese in calling for #BringBackTheGoodLuckCatByJoyHarjo Now about the book and the cat. The cat's name is Woogie (a good name) and she gets in all kinds of scraps. She accidentally gets tumbled in the clothes dryer, a big, mean dog chases her and she has to have stitches. Boys s...

INDIAN NO MORE, by Charlene Willing McManis with Traci Sorell is one of the best books I've ever read. Thank you to Tu Books and Stacy L. Whitman for sending @ofglades the uncorrected proof to review. At first, I was sorry it wasn't an audio book, because it is sometimes easier for me to listen to books. But just after reading the first chapter, "The Walking Dead"--SNAP!, the voice of ten year-old Regina Petit was in my head. It stayed there till the last page, and it's still talking to me now. Regina says, "My family was Umpqua. I was Umpqua. That's just how it was." But it gets messy fast. She has always lived on the Grand Ronde reservation, thirty miles from Salem, Oregon, but Congress passes a bill that says that the Umpqua (and other tribes in Oregon) have been terminated. Regina's grandmother Chich tells her, "The President has just signed the bill from Congress saying that we're no longer Indian." But before that we ...