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
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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