I loved this story of wildlife rescue, magic, and finding your own identity!

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Also the relationship between Jacks and Jessamine is kind of what I wanted Bingo Love to be, PERSONALLY

LOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD THIS

It took me awhile to read because there are just so many striking sentences that I needed to pause and savor.

I think it will be a little tricky for this book to find its audience--it's published as middle grade since it's dealing with his life as a middle schooler (and before) but it's very sophisticated and would need a lot of scaffolding for the average middle schooler to really dig into. But a lot of teens might balk at reading about a 7th grader. But whatever effort need to be put into this book is worth it!!

gorgeoussssssssss

Great for readers who enjoy the possibly-tedious details of old-timey life! (I am one of those readers!) Some of the medical details might be a bit much for the squeamish! (I am the squeamish!) For a book that started with such big thorny feelings I did feel like it resolved a bit too neatly but EH we all could use more happy endings.

Hmm. I really love Eric Gansworth's YA fiction, so I was excited to pick up his memoir in verse. I'm maybe not sure who the audience here is? It's published as a YA memoir but to me, I feel like it would have more appeal to older people who can relate more directly to Gansworth's love of the Beatles? There are a lot of Beatles references woven throughout this book. But the Beatles aren't exactly obscure?

Also like, poetry isn't super my thing but this didn't exactly feel like poems to me, for the most part? Not the way for example [b:Brown Girl Dreaming|20821284|Brown Girl Dreaming|Jacqueline Woodson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424308405l/20821284._SY75_.jpg|39959105] or [b:How I Discovered Poetry|18079805|How I Discovered Poetry|Marilyn Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372047920l/18079805._SY75_.jpg|25387103] did. This, and it makes me feel like an asshole to say this but I will speak my truth, this felt more like some essays with extra line breaks? T B H??

That said I think this would be a valuable mirror for some Native readers since Native stories are definitely underrepresented, and also an interesting window into one particular experience of reservation life. This might appeal also to young artists (there are included photos and paintings making this kind of a multimedia experience) and musicians, just to see the way all of these elements are incorporated, even if it wasn't totally successful for me as a reader personally.

lol

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-163-go-ask-alice/

I read most of this book with this expression solidly on my face:



OK so the main character Collin has some form of learning difference (it sounds like a type of OCD but they never really name it?) where when someone talks to him, he has to count up how many letters they said and then say that number out loud. So you say "Hi, Collin" and he says, "8. Hello, how are you?" Obviously this sounds like it would be frustrating and a big use of mental energy, and I could see some kids teasing Collin about it, but everyone in this book reacts as if Collin has said "FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR MOM," they are like SO overwhelmed by him saying a number before he talks, it seemed like a really outsized reaction especially for a contemporary novel? And especially to be coming from the teachers? And for this to be a thing that has gotten him kicked out of like 5 schools?!? And again I don't want to minimize that this would definitely be a struggle but I didn't really understand why this was suuuuuuch a huge deal to everyone and why teachers would be sooooo infuriated at him for being disruptive, especially since he explicitly only says the numbers if someone is talking directly to him? It's not like he's just yelling numbers all the time. And again: sure there are definitely teachers who are dicks but why is EVERY teacher at EVERY school infuriated by this?? Get him an IEP jeez.

Also the kid bullies in this...like one boy PEES ON COLLIN. Just like whips it out and pees directly on him because he's so bully-activated by Collin's counting tic??? Excuse me???

In his author's notes Bird mentioned something about having a learning disability but was vague on details, I found this interview with him where he said, " When I was young, it would take me an entire year to read a book. It was very hard. My brain would often wander and play silly games with me as I tried to focus, but I learned how to see it as a gift instead of a curse. And now I write books. Pretty cool, huh?" OK, sure.

ANYWAY so that's like Collin's deal, and he's half-white and half-Ojibwe but lives with his white dad, who, like everyone else in the book is completely infuriated by Collin's counting tic? So finally Collin gets kicked out of school for counting?????????? Again????? And this time Collin's dad abruptly sends him to live with his Ojibwe mother who Collin has never met before.

And Bird himself is also half-Ojibwe and it sounds like didn't grow up particularly connected to Ojibwe culture, and I think there could be something really interesting here where Collin comes to the reservation and has just internalized all of these white stereotypes about indigenous people, and it sounds like maybe that's something that Bird also grew up with? And I think there could be a really interesting book about interrogating those stereotypes but for me, this isn't it? It kind of just seems like Collin learns that the bad stereotypes are wrong but the "good" stereotypes are true?

It felt REALLY shaky to me as a white reader. I found this NYT review by an Ojibwe/Seneca author, David Treuer, who wrote this:

The place where all this happens, Fond du Lac Indian Reservation in Minnesota, is real, and the larger world in which “The Brave” is set is our world: airplanes, cars, bullies, math, pets, parents, gravity. Spirituality and what we could call magic appear as well, apportioned to the reservation and the Native American characters only. But realistic or fantastical, fiction must create a ground-floor reality. And the floor on which this novel is built is shaky.

Every Native American in it — in addition to being beautiful and wise — is nice, brave and witty. Everything is a lesson. And none of it, to my ear, is derived from Ojibwe culture or Ojibwe life as it’s actually lived at Fond du Lac.

Reservations have long been magic meaning machines for outsiders: dirty prisons and proof of white perfidy if you’ve got a historical bent; diminished gardens tended by sage earthkeepers if you’re into folklore; troubled places where policies fail if you’re into politics. But in every case reservations are imagined as places apart, in but not of America, the land that time either rejected or forgot. “The Brave” is no exception.

At one point, Collin attends a ceremony of sorts. Ushered into a teepee with a fire in the middle, he is soon joined by four people wearing robes of different colors and holding matching stones, which they place in the fire. “The stones sizzle to life, sending gray clouds of smoke into the teepee. The heat immediately engulfs my body. I’ve never been to a sauna before, but I imagine this is what it feels like.” This isn’t how Ojibwe ceremony works. This isn’t even how physics works.

Writers don’t get to make Native American life mean whatever they want it to mean. They don’t get to do this because Native people have been erased, silenced and willfully misunderstood for too many years.

It’s especially important that they not do it in fiction for young people, which may be the only stage of life when most Americans think about us at all, as our history and present tense is inaccurately and glancingly taught to them in school.

The world depicted in “The Brave” is not Native American life as I know it. It’s summer camp, complete with exotic names and faux rituals; chock-full of crafts, bravery tests and self-discovery.

That's basically the vibe I got but of course it's not my culture being written about?

Again, it's frustrating because I think that Bird could write something really interesting maybe based on his experiences of internalizing stereotypes about Ojibwe culture and going on to unlearn them but this book feels like it hasn't unlearned them yet??

Anyway I wish that we had way more #OwnVoices stories for young readers so that this could just be one of many but instead it's one of very few and it's like.....for my money not a great example!!

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AND I'M NOT EVEN GETTING INTO THE NEIGHBOR GIRL WHO DIES OF ALS AND/OR MAYBE LITERALLY TURNS INTO A BUTTERFLY?????

:/

This is a collection of 4 essays that were published online in 2017 and as I was reading the book I realized that I had definitely already read at least some, if not all, of them online. In her intro, Smarsh notes that she hasn't really updated these and they serve as a time capsule of 2016-7. It was interesting revisiting these since I do think the general Dollysance has only grown since then, with more people generally approving of Dolly without knowing many details about her life/music.

Anyway, it's kind of weird as a book-artifact but still, interesting and enjoyable essays on a topic dear to my heart.

I had this billed to me as "Indigenous Narnia" and I was like, heck yes! It does deliver on that concept, as 2 Canadian First Nations kids, Morgan and Eli, who are not siblings by birth but have both been taken in as foster kids by the same white couple. Morgan has been through a bunch of different foster homes and is an Angry Young Lady, while Eli is shy and likes drawing. Anyway he draws a magic portal and both kids travel through the paper where they end up on a quest to save a land that's been frozen into eternal winter.

Anyway, the specific details of the land (Aski) are based in Cree lore, which it turns out Eli is familiar with because he lived with his Cree family for longer before being placed in foster care, while Morgan knows very little about Cree culture (despite being born Cree). This puts Eli at a bit of an advantage in the world which flips their dynamic a little bit. I loved the relationship between these siblings, and I loved the twist this book placed on portal fantasy.

I will say in terms of writing this was a little clunky in places? One thing that sticks out to me--and maybe just because I recently read [b:Echo Mountain|51969326|Echo Mountain|Lauren Wolk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571686964l/51969326._SY75_.jpg|73478896] which went into so much detail about Appalachian folk remedies--is there's a part where Morgan is instructed to hold a burning coal to someone else's wound and then she immediately notes that it "cauterized" the wound and they move on from that without really explaining what that means? Which maybe SOME tweens already learned from like, reading Echo Mountain or perhaps from reading Star Wars novels about the aftermath of lightsaber battles, but it felt like the novel could have done a bit more work to contextualize that whole thing. (Honestly, given the other contemporary references in the book--compare it to Star Wars).

Anyway, all in all a good middle grade portal fantasy that's, yes, great for Narnia fans, as well as fans of outdoor survival stories and those who want to learn more about indigenous lore.

I think this is a great novel for this moment in time and I think it would be a great novel to teach in a classroom setting. I've seen some other reviews saying they hadn't heard much about the Japanese internment camps before and they were shocked etc and I think this would be particularly engaging if it were someone's first exposure to this fucked-up history. For me I found it a little bit muddled given the many character perspectives? Just a little hard to hang my hat on any one character.

Spoiler

Also OK when it was Minnow's POV obsessing about Twitchy I was like "ok this seems gay" and then after Twitchy died and his gf was like "no one understands how sad I am" and Minnow was like "no I understand because I also loved him" and everyone was like "oh ok" like.....IDK felt underdeveloped!! which I guess is what happens when you have 14 POV characters!!!

ANYWAY, I'm glad this book exists but I'm just not the target for it