Ms. Engel's 2021 First Nations Book Browse: Home

Edie's idyllic life in a Seattle neighborhood is upended when she realizes her parents have been telling lies. Biracial 12-year-old Edie has always known her mother was Native American but adopted into a white family. Due to this, her mother has claimed to be ignorant about her birth family and tribe. (Edie's father is white.) While the ambiguities of Edie's family history make her uncomfortable, she accepts the story until the day she searches the attic while working on a film project with her two best friends. They discover a box there with photos of a woman who looks exactly like Edie. (Attribution: Kirkus Reviews)

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Maisie loves ballet. The studio where she dances is her "sanctuary," the place where there are no bad days. Now that she's torn her ACL, a key ligament, she experiences depression. At times, she feels disconnected from her family, and her grades suffer. (School Library Journal). In addition to this, “none of what she’s learning seems relevant to her. Her grades have dipped, her relationships with her friends feel strained, and she’s gotten snippy with her parents. She feels bad about her behavior, but all she can think of is resuming dance classes. (Attribution: Kirkus Reviews)

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This is story of Sequoyah, one of the most important figures in Native American history!

13-year-old Uwohali has not seen his father, Sequoyah, for many years. So when Sequoyah returns to the village, Uwohali is eager to reconnect. But Sequoyah’s new obsession with making strange markings causes friends and neighbors in their tribe to wonder whether he is crazy, or worse—practicing witchcraft. What they don’t know, and what Uwohali discovers, is that Sequoyah is a genius and his strange markings are actually an alphabet representing the sounds of the Cherokee language. (Attribution: Publisher)

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Regina tries to acclimate to her new school in Los Angeles but find ignorance and racism toward Indians prevalent. Is she still Indian, American, or both—and what does that mean for her and her family? New friends Keith and Addie are a bright spot, but as black children, Keith and Addie also face racism. (Attribution: School Library Journal)

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It is 1805 and Mary Lambert has always felt safe among the deaf community of Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard where practically everyone communicates in a shared sign language, but recent events have shattered her life; her brother George has died, land disputes between English settlers and the Wampanoag people are becoming increasingly bitter, and a "scientist" determined to discover the origins of the islands' widespread deafness has decided Mary makes the perfect "live specimen"--and kidnapped her.

Disclaimer: This is considered an #ownvoices work only in the sense that the author, Ann Clare LeZotte, is Deaf. She is not Native. However, the book's Acknolwedgements section indicates that she did enlist "sensitivity readers" from the Nipmuc Nation, as well as the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation. The book has, by all accounts, been well received by those Native American communities.

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A middle grade verse novel set during the COVID-19 pandemic, about a Wabanaki girl's quarantine on her grandparents' reservation and the local dog that becomes her best friend.

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Sixteen-year-old Ned Begay detested life in the Navajo mission school where he was sent. There, "anything that belonged to the Navajo way was bad, and our Navajo language was the worst." However, in one of the greatest ironies in American history, when WWII broke out, Navajos were recruited by the Marine Corps to use their native language to create an unbreakable code . Navajo is one of the hardest of all American Indian languages to learn, and only Navajos can speak it with complete fluency. So, Ned Begay joined a select group of Navajo code talkers to create one code the Japanese couldn't break.  (Attribution: Kirkus Reviews)

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Elatsoe (Ellie) is a Lipan Apache teen who lives in Texas, where bizarre supernatural occurrences are the norm. Ellie has inherited the spiritual skills of her people and has raised the ghost of her dog Kirby. A shimmering mass, Kirby is a loyal companion who alerts Ellie to danger and has the ability to move through walls. Ellie uses her supernatural abilities to investigate the gruesome, suspicious death of her cousin Trevor. The story opens slowly, but the turning point arrives when Ellie dreams about Trevor and he reveals the murderer's identity. (Attribution: School Library Journal)

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Two months in to her new foster home placement, Morgan inherits a new foster brother, Eli, a young Cree boy who spends his time quietly drawing in his sketchbook. After a blowup with their earnestly well-intentioned white foster parents, Morgan and Eli shelter themselves in the attic, where a drawing in his pad seems to come to life, creating a portal into the wintry Barren Grounds  of Misewa, where the passage of time is, Narnia-like, different from in Winnipeg. After Eli disappears into this world, Morgan is determined to go after him to bring him back. When she finds him, they discover that the Misewa community of animal beings needs the help of the two siblings to survive the White Time! (Attribution: Kirkus Reviews)

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Seventh-grader Nizhoni can see monsters—a power, she learns, inherited from her long-lost monster-slayer mother. After her father receives a too-good-to -be-true job offer from Mr. Charles, the head of an evil, pipeline-laying corporation, Nizhoni discovers that Mr. Charle's is a shape-shifting monster in disguise, intent on kidnapping her brother and using his water-bending powers to help with a nefarious fracking scheme. To defeat Mr. Charles, Nizhoni embarks on a quest for weapons, and readers will follow her through Diné (or Navajo) legend, into the Glittering World in search of Spider Woman, across the four sacred mountains, and through the Rainbow Road, to the House of the Sun.

DIsclaimer: The author, who is Pueblo, has taken some heat from critics about her depiction of Navajo customs/mythology. Others have praised her for providing "new windows for many, and long-awaited mirrors for others."

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If you enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie books as a kid, this book is a must-read! Although it seems like a "young" book at first glance, the second half is DEVASTATING. Those in search for a tearjerker, as well as insight into Native American history "from the inside" (Erdrich is a member of the tribe she writes about) -- could do no better than this trilogy.

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In the virtual realm of the Floraverse, Bugz is an unbeatable warrior with seemingly limitless power to create mythical creatures and hardcore weapons. Her only real enemy is Clan:LESS, a group  of alt-right gamers who despise women in gaming and who want nothing more than to rule the Floraverse. In real life, Bugz is an Anishinaabe girl living with her family on the rez, where she also feels out  of place because of certain gender -based traditions. When she meets Feng, a Uyghur Muslim boy who has fled China, Bugz realizes she isn’t the only one feeling trapped between two worlds. After finding out  that Feng is a member of Clan:LESS, though, Bugz has to fight even harder to figure out  her place in both the Floraverse and the real world and to sort out  her relationship with Feng. (Attribution: Booklist)

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This coming -of-age debut tackles what it means to belong. Apple is quirky, blurts things out  to classmates, pretends to be a foreign exchange student, and feels responsible for her mother's death. She is Native, living with her nonindigenous family. Her dad and stepmom decide to send her to Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation to stay with her grandparents, strangers to her, over the  summer. Apple's  cousin Junior becomes her protector, and her cousin Nezzie, her first best friend. Apple  is threatened by Karl, a man who knew her mother growing up and does not think she is "Indian" enough. The [frightening!] prologue sets readers up for a scene in  which Karl's son chases her into an open grave(!) where she finally realizes that her mother has been with her all along. (Attribution: School Library Journal)

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Rain's  mother is  dead (she was struck by lightning), and as the novel opens, her best friend is  killed in a car accident just after he and Rain  realize their friendship has grown into romance. Six months later, her older brother urges her to go to her great-aunt's Indian  Camp. At first she shrugs it off, but later volunteers to photograph the camp for the town paper and begins to share her Aunt Georgia's commitment to it. (Attribution: Publishers Weekly)

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The story of three Iñupiaq children (then known as Eskimos) living above the Arctic Circle who are sent to a Catholic boarding school with other children, white and Indian.Told by five different narrators covering the time period 1960-65, this is essentially Luke's story, whose native—and, as the title indicates, difficult-to-pronounce—name is not revealed until toward the end. Forbidden to use their language, fed unfamiliar food and under the thumb of priests and nuns, some strict and some kind but whose religion is unfamiliar, Luke's homesickness at Catholic boarding school is visceral.

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Fourteen-year-old Junior is a cartoonist and bookworm. Soon after he starts freshman year, Junior boldly transfers from a school on the Spokane reservation to one in a tiny white town 22 miles away. Despite his parents' frequent lack of gas money (they're a "poor-ass family"), racism at school and many crushing deaths at home, Junior manages the year in a tiny white town. (Attribution Kirkus Reviews)

Disclaimer: This book contains a lot of inappropriate sexual references from the perspective its 14-year old boy protagonist, Junior. However, it offered such a great window into Native American life, I thought it truly worthy. – Ms. Goldberg

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Louise Wolfe regrets dumping her first real boyfriend via email instead of face-to-face, but his offensive remarks about Native Americans crossed a line for this proud Muscogee (Creek) teen. As senior year begins, she's focused on helping her little brother, Hughie, adjust to high school life, and on earning her desired beat on the school newspaper. Competing against and falling for Joey, a new kid with a passion for photojournalism, is an added bonus. But when Hughie finds himself at the center of a divisive community conflict centered on the casting of the school production of the Wizard of Oz, Louise struggles to balance her responsibilities as a journalist with a desire to protect her family. (Attribution School Library Journal)

Disclaimer: This book contains Young Adult content, including alcohol use. However, it offered such a window into a Native American teenager’s head, I thought it worthy. – Ms. Goldberg

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On the reservation, Four Winds had to fight against starvation. Now she must fight to hold on to who she is. Ten-year-old Four Winds is a young Lakota girl caught up in the changes brought about by her people's forced move to the reservation. Set in the Dakota Territory, it is the year 1880. Four Winds has been taken away from her family and brought to a boarding school run by whites. It is here she is taught English and learns how to assimilate into white culture. But soon she discovers that the teachers at this school are not interested in assimilation but rather in erasing her culture.