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The book would have been so much better if Alvin Ho hadn't wanted to play Indian. I was actually surprised to see this in such a new book. The book works in so many other ways--his awkwardness, the way he relates to his family and friends, etc.-- And having read the other books in the series, I already loved him. But I was very disappointed to see this. And if this was my first introduction to Alvin, I'm not sure I'd want more.

I'm SHOCKED.

I read Wendy's comment on your previous entry, and I have only the first 2 Alvin Ho books so I looked through *Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking and Other Natural Disasters* because I thought that's naturally where it would go, but no, it's not in there (plus, there are newer books, as Wendy said.)

I find really interesting (and disturbing) when one non-white group performs the stereotypes of other non-white groups and cannot make the connections or commonalities of mockery, bias, oppression, etc. My fellow graduate students and I at Illinois worked hard to show the undergrads that the Chief mascot was not entirely unlike the Pekin Chinks mascot at a high school only a couple hours from town in an effort to form some pan-ethnic solidarity around the Chief issue, and I guess I should not have been surprised at how resistant some of them were to seeing the connections. How would Asian Americans feel if we saw non Asian American people playing "Japanese Interment" or "Blacks v Koreans in the 1992 LA Riots" or "Chinese miners v white miners"? This speaks first to a major failing on our education system in not educating our young people on, well, let's just call it appropriate behavior, and second on the failure of our books in perpetuating these stereotypes in children's literature. This is a pretty egregiously (I've been using this word a lot lately) horrific and inappropriate depiction. I think that it exists at all means that we haven't been taught to think about other people, only about ourselves (if at all), and that is frightening.

What surprises me most is that given all the dialogue we've been creating around these sorts of issues, there still isn't ONE person at these publishing houses that says, "Now hold on a minute, shouldn't we think twice about xyz before we publish this?" Not even one?

Ah, the link to Ms Park's blogpost is 404ing.

Thanks, Allandaros, for the heads up on the broken link. I fixed it.

What an odd juxtaposition. On one hand, the author creates young characters who actually have heard of "King Philip's War". On the other hand, this is one of the more over-the-top valorizations of stereotyping that I've seen in recent children's literature. I kept wishing that Alvin would have a wake-up moment, but apparently not. Thanks for providing the in-depth look.

Hi Debbie, thanks for alerting me on twitter. your comments deserve a more thoughtful reply than 140 characters, so i'll respond here. I'm terribly sorry that my work offended you. But stereotypes are offensive. My intention, as from the first of the series, is to highlight seldom-mentioned historical events/facts that textbooks and popular historians tend to exclude, many of which seem to involve a collective shame. In this case, it was King Philip's War, in which the Native population of New England, already thinned by smallpox and other European diseases, fought viciously against English encroachment and in turn was mercilessly slaughtered by the settlers, who were also nearly wiped out by the fighting. It happened 100 years before the American Revolutionary War and forged the beginning of a new national identity, separate from England, for the colonists. It was a seminal event for the later rebellion, yet when is this ever mentioned in the elementary classroom? Or mentioned anywhere at all?

As for the stereotyped play and costumes . . . well, when kids play "cowboys and Indians" or "settlers and Indians" (being that this is colonial Massachusetts history), that's how i imagined they would play and dress, based on how it's been done in the past and as recently as the Disney Pocahontas craze in the mid-to-late 90s. Politically correct? No. But do kids play politically correctly? No. Should I perpetuate play that is not politically correct? No. But I would not be TRUTHFUL if I were to fabricate a scenario for them that conforms to our current, enlightened-adult sense of how kids should play if that’s not the behavior that we’ve already passed to them. And good writing is about being honest, regardless of how discomforting it might be, especially when echoed in our children's play.

My job as a writer is not to erase unpleasantness, stereotypes, or even racism from a child's world. My job is to hold a mirror to that world and allow them to look at it more directly than they might otherwise. I believe in eradicating stereotypes as much as you, but eradication does not include erasing our shameful portrayal of Natives in the past and pretending that none of it has been passed down.

Are kids supposed to “get” this? I expect they will get what they need to ask about King Philip’s War and about juvenile behavior encouraged by adult-generated culture and props. If not, then the adults who get it, should start the conversation.

Thank you for your close reading of Alvin, and for starting the discussion.

Ms. Look, I think it's really interesting that you see the silence on the topic of King Philip's War as something to be rectified, and use your novel to do so, but don't see "playing Indian" as a problem to be addressed, and instead use it in the service of rectifying the first problem.

Yes, it is true that children still play Settlers and Indians, but can it also not be true that there are some adults out there who, when they see this kind of play, go up to the children and say, "Hey kids, this isn't cool because xyz. Let's find another way to have fun." I have a hard time believing that it's okay to have this kind of play so consistently and unapologetically perpetuated in children's books because it's "truthful." It's also truthful that some adults push back when kids play Settlers and Indians, and yet we don't see very many depictions of that, do we?

If the author really wanted to 'eradicate stereotypes," she might have found a creative way to actually include that in the story other than their continued perpetration.

For people who actually want to be informed about Metacom and the Wampanoag's struggle against the colonials, I suggest the documentary and reenactment After the Mayflower at the PBS website, part of the We Shall Remain series.

You think this book is bad... what about all the children's stories that involve stereotypes of Europeans, with over-the-top princess dresses and crowns and ridiculous knight costumes?

I tried hard to find a different message in this book, because I loved Alvin Ho, and I was sure--SURE--Lenore Look couldn't have meant what this book seemed to be saying. I'm not kidding, I read the book twice, trying to find whatever I was missing. I'm not rigid about these things; Debbie and I sometimes clash in our opinions, and that's only when I speak up in disagreement (I often disagree silently). Yet as an adult reader, one who is a fan of Alvin Ho and approached the book as a friend, I simply could not find anything in the book that did anything but validate stereotypes. If there is a subtler point there, I think it fails completely.

You say it's up to the adults who "get" it to share the message with the child readers. While I generally think that there's too much emphasis right now on adults talking with kids about the books they read (rather than letting kids figure it out for themselves, even if they sometimes make mistakes), yeah, if I knew my nieces were reading this book I would probably engage in conversation with them about it. But frankly, that conversation would be about how ridiculous it is to find such a thing in a modern children's book. I don't think there's anything in the book that I could use as a tool or anything like that.

I leave the points about Native children reading this book to Debbie, because I can't speak to that angle. But when a non-Native child reads this book, assuming s/he doesn't play like this him/herself (which I find likely), I can't see that it does anything but validate racist behavior and play in others. After reading books like this, how would it not seem totally normal for your teacher to have the class dressing up "like Indians" for Thanksgiving? I see over and over that kids who are not overly racist, were not raised in overtly racist homes, still don't get that people who do that are dressing like "historical" Indians, and that real-life present-day Indians are very much a part of American society.