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- Verified Buyer
As a fourth grade student, I gobbled up The Little House on the Prairie series one summer. I loved the rich storytelling of days gone by, could hear Pa's fiddle playing and the click of Ma's needles, and longed to taste the first taste of sugar snow when the family tapped the trees for their maple secrets hidden within.Louise Erdrich has given a new generation of readers much of these same reading experiences, but has managed to tell it in the voice of a non-"chimookoman," or white person. No, this eight year old narrator is vastly different from Laura.Omakayas, or Little Frog, has a family similar to the Ingalls': -Mama, her hardworking and resourceful mother -Deydey, her strict, often traveling father -Nokomis, her loving, healer of a grandmother -Angeline, her beautiful and seemingly perfect older sister, -Pinch, her annoying younger brother -Neewo, or "fourth," her baby brother whom she adores -loads of aunts, uncles, cousins -Old Tallow, a neighboring old woman who has an inexplicable soft spot for Omakayas -Andeg, the tamed crowThis is a story, much like Laura's, of hard work, of self-sacrificing for the greater good of community and family, of long days put in so that the community and family can survive during the lean winter months and of stories told by the elders that teach, inform, and mold the younger set.I'm surprised to say that this story is so much richer than Laura's, though. While it is the TRUE story of the westward expansion our history books are only beginning to scratch the surface with, the complexity of the story and how it was woven in a cyclical manner makes The Birchbark House THE story I will turn to when my students are looking for a story about life in the mid-1800's in the U.S.I only wish I'd had this series of historically accurate tales to turn to when I was ten; however, I can rest knowing that at least this generation will have them to love.HIGHLY recommended!*Many thanks to Kate Olson, librarian extraordinaire and reviewer of all books ever printed, for pointing me in the right direction with this one.*Now I'm off to read the rest in this series!"West is where the spirits of the dead walk. If the whites keep chasing us west, we'll end up in the land of the spirits.""I have dreamed that's where they want us to go, anyway," said Albert. "That will please them.""They are like greedy children. Nothing will ever please them for long," said Deydey..."Not until they have it all," said Fishtail. "All of our lands. Our wild-rice beds, hunting grounds, fishing streams, gardens. Not even when we are gone and they have the bones of our loved ones will they be pleased. I have thought about this."
