The Birchbark House series
It has long been my practice to center people of color and women in my own fiction reading. When I'm picking out books to read with my kids I've been less discriminating. I wouldn't read something overtly racist or sexist, but if reading Captain Underpants is what's going to get my kid interested in books, then I'll put up with a certain level of literal potty humor. But I do try a little, and ooh baby, do I have a recommendation for you. And by the way, even if you don't have elementary aged kiddos at the moment, I would have enjoyed these books simply for my own pleasure, so take a look!
I'd known and loved Louise Erdrich's work for a long time, two of my particular favorites being The Sentence and Future Home of the Living God. And I'd known that she had a series for kids but until I had a kid the right age, I wasn't motivated to take a look. I now really, really wish I'd read these much earlier. And I especially wish I'd had these books when I was a child and very into Little House on the Prairie.
Like the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, these books are set in the mid 1800s - though slightly earlier) and they take a journey through the Midwest - though more northerly. Unlike the Little House series, which depict indigenous people as savages to be feared and white settlers as pioneers and adventurers, the stories are rooted with Anishinaabe children and their families. They start at the western tip of Lake Superior and by the second generation have migrated west to the northern Dakota territory.
There are many of things I loved about these books. First, the window into what family life in indigenous communities looked like almost two centuries ago. The way life was tied to the seasons: rooted in one camp for spring and summer where they were close to maple sugaring trees and the garden and in another place in the winter and fall, where there was wild rice to be harvested and a place to cache food for the cold months. The way siblings across time and in all places tease and squabble and love each other. The work and play that buoyed life together, first in the woods among the birches, and then on the sweeping prairie, where camps follow the buffalo.
I loved the integration of Ojibway words and phrases - sometimes with meanings made explicit and sometimes you needed to figure out from context clues. The main character Omakayas told her annoying little brother, "Gego, Pinch!" (stop it, Pinch!) so often that I heard Orie repeating it to himself in the days following those chapters. Erdrich provides a glossary at the end of each book, but I found that we didn't need to consult it.
I also loved and was heartbroken by the unflinching approach to illness, death and conflict. These families experience starvation, small pox and forced migration. They endure tragedies and you mourn with them when loved ones are lost, experience their fear and despair during a kidnaping, rage when they are cheated and their belongings are stolen. But we also experience the deep love of family connection, the joy of sneaking a taste of maple sugar or learning to ride a horse for the first time, the triumph of stealing an eagle's feathers and the exhilaration of canoeing churning rapids.
There were times while Orie and I were reading these books when I did need to stop and check if he understood what was going on. Sometimes the storyline and situations are complicated. And they are often told from a child's perspective, when the child him or herself doesn't necessarily understand what's happening. These times were often when the families in the story encountered white people whose habits, language and ways were unfamiliar. For example, when Chickadee, one of Omakayas' twin sons is 'rescued' by a wagon full of women wearing long grey gowns with funny cloths on their heads and a man with a black robe they call 'Father.' They take Chickadee to a building where they try to cut off his braids and take his warm rabbit fur clothing before he escapes.
It was clear to me in that scenario that a priest and some nuns took Chickadee and that they wanted to 'civilize' him. But that wasn't clear to Chickadee and it wasn't clear to Orie, though it did start a conversation about they way the church treated indigenous children. Erdrich's depiction of white folks doesn't make them all into villains. In her stories both white and Anishnaabe people are good and kind, sneaky and terrible. But she does make clear that the incursion of settlement on indigenous territory is changing their way of life in a way that is difficult and sorrowful.
These books are just so nuanced and beautiful. The characters have so much life and personality. You can find them at the public library in every format. And of course, I support buying from local bookstores (Each book is only seven or eight dollars at Third Place). I read one in hard copy, listened to at least one audio book and read several on my e-reader. They are excellent in all the ways, but if you do read instead of listen, you'll also have access to Erdrich's soft pencil-drawn maps and illustrations. I love a book with a map!
If you or your kids do read them, I hope you'll tell me what you think because I could talk about them all day!
