It feels a bit weird assigning this a rating because I rate things by my expectations, which is a bit of a weird framing for a children’s book.

This is a well known and powerful story that is executed well and hopefully many children read. It’s interesting having this in the conversation with other books about residential schools, because this is necessarily framed for children. It does a great job being informative but also tries not to scare kids, I think. The schools are far worse than the experience depicted here. We’re still finding mass graves. It’s great there is a story like this that is meant to inform children. Maybe the absolute bullshit we were sold at my school about indigenous relations and Canadian history, in general, has been replaced with something approaching the truth. At least kids will be aware of that atrocity if they can have this book (and others).