Indigo's Bookshelf: Voices of Native Youth

I asked my friends if I could be the first one to do a blog after our long hiatus. Indigo's Bookshelf has changed. We have some new members--like Liz H., 16, who can talk to Florida, Deaf, Mexican Indigenous experience! Alexis has decided to take more of a backseat (because she became a lightning rod for criticism). But we still feel this is worth the mission we set out to do! To honor the strength and memory of our friend Indigo and talk about Indigenous books for kids and teens.  My life has changed too. Last year, my younger sister Violet, or Vi which she preferred, died of Covid-19. She was "almost six." It's been hard for me to read kidlit because of her. It was Dawn Quigley's early chapter book Jo Jo Makoons that brought me back and I know this is a book that kids like Vi will love to read and feel proud to be Indigenous. Dawn Quigley is a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, North Dakota. The illustrator Tara Audibert is of Wolastoqey/French he...

*Warning: There are spoilers because I discuss the book, but I don’t give away important plot points. There is also use of the n-word. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I was really drawn to the image on Dawn Quigley’s APPLE IN THE MIDDLE (AITM) before the book was even published (August 2018). The image of a contemporary Native teen, who is not ridiculously glamorous, but pretty and real (love those earrings!), got stuck in my mind immediately. I thought, ‘I want to know who this girl is,’ and why there’s a pink house in the background. I am happy to say that the book more than lived up to my expectations. It’s not just a well-written, enjoyable book I admired from a distance. In some ways, I feel I am that girl on the cover, fifteen-year old Apple Starkington. Even though the circumstances of our lives are very different. Like Apple, I have a White father and a Native mother. My mom is Florida Seminole, while Apple’s mother was Turtle Mountain ...