The Birchbark House

Thank you a million times over to the Children's Books group because I’d tried to read this book some time back, got about ¼ or so the way through it, and put it down because I didn’t enjoy the writing style. Because it’s one of the books chosen as a group read for this book, and because I know a co......more

This is a sweet story of a young Ojibwa girl and her family. It questions the definition of family, shares some of the Ashinabe traditions, reimagines life back in colonial days, understands the importance of literacy, and addresses the genocides and land grabs by white settlers. The story itself is......more

Book on CD narrated by Nicolle Littrell What Laura Ingalls Wilder did for the pioneer families in 19th century plains states, Erdrich has done for the Native Americans in this same time period. Omakayas is a seven-year-old Ojibwa girl living in Wisconsin. She is the sole survivor of a small pox epide......more

Did not finish. I started this as a read aloud and my daughter didn't enjoy this so continued reading to myself but found I couldn't get to know the characters and was enjoying the hunting element of this book. I did expect a book about a native American family to have some detail of this kind but c......more

When we started this book, I wasn't sure if the kids would go with it. A lot of the books we read are pretty action-packed, which helps since we only read 10-15 pages or so a night. But they settled right in even though the first half of the book is not really about plot at all, just letting you liv......more