November 25, 2013
In 1885 Ontario, “white-skin” loggers are destroying the native Anishnaabe people’s land and claiming it as their own. Five-year-old Mishqua Ma’een’gun (Red Wolf) and other children are torn from their homes and forced to attend boarding school. Red Wolf is renamed George Grant and force-fed English and Christianity by the impatient and cruel school staff. Red Wolf is devastated, confused, and abused, his wolf pendant his only comfort. When he is finally allowed to visit his family, the adjustment is jarring, and his resentment grows. Meanwhile, Crooked Ear, a wolf that bonded with Red Wolf after the wolf’s family was murdered, searches for the child. Dance’s first novel addresses a horrific historical period and details Red Wolf’s harsh awakening in painful, hard-hitting scenes. Although the characters can be one-note and the narrative blunt (when Red Wolf’s father asks what he has learned at school the boy thinks, “I learned that I am a savage.... I learned to hide inside myself and pretend I wasn’t there”), readers will finish with a strong sense of the abuses suffered by natives at the hands of settlers. Ages 9–12.
March 1, 2014
Gr 4-6-Red Wolf is a Native child living with his family when a representative of the Canadian government comes to move his family to the reservation and the children to a residential school. As Red Wolf adjusts to the people who want to "civilize" him, so must Crooked Ear, the young wolf he has befriended. The settlers have placed a new bounty on wolves, orphaning the young cub and forcing his pack to move. While the story begins with fast-paced changes for Red Wolf and Crooked Ear, things get off balance, and the book ends with both of them as adults, having skipped large chunks of the story. The transformation of Red Wolf to "George" and his eventual reclaiming of his roots is relatively well developed, but none of the secondary characters show much growth. Much of their story is told rather than shown, leading to an incomplete and emotionally ineffective experience. The author does an excellent job of incorporating historical facts (including separate endnotes on the Native people and the wolves), illustrating the devastating consequences of settling the frontier in Canada and the forced assimilation of Native children. However, she tries to cover too much context, and the narratives and characters are stretched too thin. Recommended as additional reading on the Native experience.-Elizabeth Nicolai, Anchorage Public Library, AK
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