How to use this Page

• Barrow novelist Debby Dahl Edwardson is named as a finalist for the National Book Award, at Wasilla, Alaska, by 300, a blog by photographer, Bill Hess
• Debby's essay about the story she tells in My Name is Not Easy, at The Phantom Tollbooth, a blog by several writers of children's and young adult literature

This is an awesome video. Use it with students in high school English classes, film, social studies, social justice courses...

[Note: If you cannot see it, go right to it on youtube: Bad Indians.

Cynthia Leitich Smith's new book, Eternal, was launched yesterday. I read a copy a few weeks ago. It is a page-turner about vampires and angels and... It's quite a ride, from Austin to Chicago. I'll leave it there for you to read. If you're a fan of gothic fiction, take a look at Eternal.

As you may know, my blog is about children's books about American Indians. That's what most of the content is about.

However! I think it important that children and teens know that Native people write stories, and that not all of their stories are about Native people. Cynthia's range of books is a good case in point. If you read her YA novel, Rain Is Not My Indian Name, read her vampire novels, too. Her first one is Tantalize, Eternal is the second, and a third one is in the works.

In Tribal Secrets, Robert Warrior writes about American Indian literature and criticism. He says "producers of American Indian literature continue to push the boundaries of creativity by bringing European vampires to Navajo country..." Warrior notes that such a book "does not fit into standard definitions of Indian writing..." but he goes on to say that the increase in such books "seems more than enough justification for some fundamental reworking of scholarly understandings of American Indian literature, culture, and experience."

In essence, it is important that we be open to what is being written by Native writers. Don't pigeon hole them or their writing. Expand your expectations of what Native writers write about.

Read Native writers, whether their stories are about Native life, or vampires.

So! Eternal. Click on over to Cynsations where you'll learn a lot about the book. There's more at Smith's website including a very cool book trailer that perfectly captures the mood of the book.

Today, Nadine (a librarian-in-training) wrote to me after she found my blog. We exchanged a few emails, during which I learned she's from Manitoba, Canada. She had some very cool news about In Search of April Raintree...

Written by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier, In Search of April Raintree is the book chosen for "On The Same Page: Manitoba Reads" --- a literacy project whose goal is to have 12,000 people (1% of the population of Manitoba) read the selected book between October 2008 through April 2009.

According to a review in CM: Canadian Review of Materials, it is widely used in junior and senior high schools, and university courses, too. The On The Same Page site includes a bio and among other things, an interview with her. One of the questions is

"Do you wish you could have read a book like In Search of April Raintree when you were young?"

"I have Metis people come up and tell me that In Search of April Raintree changed their lives. They grew up hiding their Aboriginal roots and with this book, they felt proud of April and proud of their roots. A lot of people, especially Aboriginal people, have told me that this story is their story because it's exactly what they went through: growing up in foster homes; alcoholism in the family, forced assimilation and racism is something that they can identify with."

Click on over to Cynsations to read Cynthia's interview of Drew Hayden Taylor. He wrote a young adult novel that I came across last March. I've yet to blog it, but do recommend it, especially for fans of vampire stories. His novel is called The Night Wanderer.

In the interview, he says:

"...I took a European legend and indigenized it.

Simply put, its the story about an Ojibway man who, 350 years ago, made his way to Europe and was bitten by a vampire. He spent all those years wandering Europe, feeling homesick but unwilling to return as the monster he'd become. But finally, unable to stop himself, he makes his way back to where his village once was in Canada, and it's now a First Nations community. He takes up residency at a bed-and-breakfast, in the basement apartment. In that same house is a sixteen-year-old girl, Tiffany, who is having problems with her white boyfriend, father, and herself. Eventually, both their lives intertwine, and things happen!"

In this article the author situates the analysis of two popular children’s books in theoretical frameworks emerging from American Indian Studies. Using a new historicist lens, she discusses Anne Rockwell’s (1999) Thanksgiving Day and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s (1935/1971) Little House on the Prairie and suggests that these books function as obstacles for the understanding of the Other in American and global society.

As noted yesterday, I've been in Minnesota this week at the Native American Literature Symposium. I met many terrific Native writers, including Heid Erdrich, Gordon Henry, Evelina Zuni Lucero, and Hershman John. In an afternoon session, I laughed aloud in Hershman's session, and snapped up a copy of his book, I Swallow Turquoise for Courage.

Hershman talked about Coyote. And then he showed us an animated short of Coyote. Made in 1965, "Coyote and the Lizard" is an old film, low-tech in comparison to present day animation, but it was hilarious. In it, some little lizards are playing, sliding down a hill on flat rocks, much like snowboarding. Their grandpa watches them as they play. Along comes Coyote. He wants to play, too, but the grandpa, knowing Coyote is trouble, tells him "No, you can't play. You're just going to be bad." Coyote asks again and again and again, promising he won't be naughty, so the grandpa finally says ok and tells him to get a thin rock. Coyote gleefully gets a rock and takes his ride, but it is too slow for him. He wants to go faster, so gets a bigger and heavier rock to slide down on...

All the while, the little lizards watch Coyote. Their expressions are terrific---smiling, happy, then wide-eyed and open-mouthed as they see Coyote's too-big rock. Going way too fast, he tumbles head-first off the rock, which overtakes him and then the rock rides Coyote down the hill.

The film was made for Navajo schools, and the narration is in their language. Hershman translated it as it played, with perfect timing and delivery. He remembers it from his own childhood. After the film, he read aloud a poem from his book, in which the Coyote story figures prominently. That poem is here.

Read more about Hershman by visiting his webpage, and get his book from the University of Arizona Press. Hershman's book can be used in high school English classes.

Tomorrow is Jack Prelutsky’s birthday, so I’d like to send him a happy shout out and celebrate his life and work with a brief post.

He was born on September 8, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Hunter College in Manhattan and worked as an opera singer, folk singer, truckdriver, photographer, plumber’s assistant, piano mover, cab driver, standup comedian, and more. He is married and lives in Seattle. He enjoys photography, carpentry, and creating games and "found object" sculpture and collages. He collects frog miniatures, art, and children’s poetry books of which he has over 5000.

Prelutsky has garnered many awards in his long career including citations as: New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, School Library Journal Best of the Best Book, International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Children's Choice, Library of Congress Book of the Year, Parents' Choice Award, American Library Association Notable Children's Recording, an Association for Library Services to Children Notable Book and Booklist Editor's Choice, among others. In 2006, he was honored as the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the national Poetry Foundation which included a $25,000 prize. His combined works have sold over a million copies and been translated into many languages.

Jack Prelutsky is a prolific writer, with many collections of poetry to his credit, including enormously popular anthologies he has compiled of other poets’ works, such as The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Random House 1983), Read-aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf 1986), The Beauty of the Beast (Knopf 1997), and The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury (Knopf 1999). In addition, there are many collections of his own popular poetry available including books organized around topics such as Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems (Mulberry 1993) and The Dragons are Singing Tonight (HarperTrophy 1998). His holiday poems are also very appealing: It’s Halloween (HarperTrophy 1996), It’s Christmas (HarperTrophy 1995), It’s Thanksgiving (HarperTrophy 1996), and It’s Valentine’s Day (HarperTrophy 1996), also available in one single audio anthology from HarperChildrensAudio (2005). And for younger children, he created a kind of “American Mother Goose” with nursery rhymes that reference cities and places in the United States, rather than European sites such as “London Bridge” or “Banbury Cross” in his collections, Ride a Purple Pelican (Greenwillow 1986) and Beneath a Blue Umbrella (Greenwillow 1990).

Jack Prelutsky became established as a poetic dynamo with the publication of The New Kid on the Block in 1984, his best-selling collection of 100+ poems illustrated by cartoonist James Stevenson with understated comic genius on every page. With poems that are nearly childhood standards now, like “Homework! Oh, Homework!” and “Bleezer’s Ice Cream,” the music of Prelutsky’s verse is irresistible. Since the publication of New Kid, he rivals Shel Silverstein for name recognition in the field of children’s poetry. Equally popular companion books followed, including Something Big Has Been Here (1990), A Pizza the Size of the Sun (1996), and It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles (2000). A fifth installment is slated for publication in 2008: My Dog May Be a Genius.

Many of Prelutsky’s poems lend themselves to choral reading and poem performance in a variety of ways. For example, his poems with repeated lines or refrains provide a natural opportunity for group participation on the refrain. One of my favorite strategies for performing Prelutsky’s poetry is singing. Count the beats in the first line or two of the poem; then count the beats in the first line or two of the song to see if they match. Many of Jack Prelutsky’s poems, in particular, match song tunes, which may not be surprising when one remembers he was a singer and musician before turning to poetry. Try his poem “Allosaurus” (from Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems), a poem describing the ferocious qualities of this dinosaur sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It’s a hilarious juxtaposition of lyrics and tune. Challenge the children to match other of his dinosaur poems to song tunes.

Allosaurus
by Jack Prelutsky

Allosaurus liked to bite,
its teeth were sharp as sabers,
it frequently, with great delight,
made mincemeat of its neighbors.

Allosaurus liked to hunt,
and when it caught its quarry,
it tore it open, back and front,
and never said, “I’m sorry!”

Allosaurus liked to eat,
and using teeth and talons,
it stuffed itself with tons of meat,
and guzzled blood by gallons.

Allosaurus liked to munch,
and kept from growing thinner
by gnawing an enormous lunch,
then rushing off to dinner.

From Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
[Sung to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat”]

For more about Jack, his life, and his work, check out his new web site and look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

P.S. As always, I'm glad to participate in the Friday Poetry Round Up, hosted this week by Semicolon. (Thanks!)

Picture credit: www.nssd112.org