By Violet Duncan
4Rbooks 5/6 grades 6-8
Amazon 4.1/5 grades level 5-6
Goodreads 4/26
Common Sense Media Not Yet Reviewed
105 pages
Synopsis
Summer always looks forward to her family’s summer trip to Canada to visit family. She can’t wait to catch up with her cousin Autumn, and to spend time with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They travel from their home in Arizona to the Native American reservation in Northern Alberta. Summer is part Cree and Part Apache.
Soon after arriving, Summer starts having dreams about a young girl at a residential school who is planning on running away with a friend. The friend disappears and the girl must escape on her own. She makes it outside of the school and into the wilderness where she is trapped by a blizzard.
While in Canada, Summer and her family participate in a march in honor of Native children who were taken from their homes to live in residential schools but never returned. Summer and Autumn start doing detective work to learn as much as they can about what happened at the residential school, and why Summer is having the dreams about the girl named Mary by the school, but Buffalo Dreamer by her family.
Parental Guidelines
The underlying plot line of this novel deals with the residential school of Canada and the US for Native American children. They were often kidnapped from their homes. The goal was to assimilate them, but by erasing any sense of who they were and where they came from. Discipline was harsh and children died, buried in unmarked graves on the school.
Summer is having dreams about a girl in one of the residential schools who escapes and is caught in a blizzard. She comes to believe the dreams were sent to her by an elderly woman she meets and reconnects with later.
The story includes many Indian beliefs and traditions concerning the supernatural.
Recommendation
This is the epitome of a bittersweet story. The interactions and relationships between family members are sweet and exemplary. The tales of the residential schools and what happened there are incredibly bitter. A tough read at times, but also very satisfying.
This would be a great read for an 8th grade classroom when studying the interactions between the US government and Native Americans. Its use of Native American language and customs provides important insights into Native American culture.
As an individual read I would recommend parental oversight to help with the supernatural elements and difficult subject matter. I purchased this book at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, an art museum which specializes in Native history and artwork.
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