Book Review: Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

As we celebrate Indigenous People's Day, we share an appropriate book review...

Five Little Indians
by Michelle Good (Good)

 

In Five Little Indians, Michelle Good, a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, braids together the true stories of five fictional Residential School Survivors. At times humorous, often sobering, and always engrossing, this tale of five young people who struggled and survived their childhood experiences in Indian Residential Schools, drew me in, and left me with a better understanding of the repercussions of the childhood trauma on individuals, their families, and their friends.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try I Am Not A Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis & Kathy Kacer, Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese or Good Friday on the Rez by David Bunnell.)

 

( publisher’s official Five Little Indians web page ) | ( official Michelle Good web site )

 

See Carrie K.'s brand-new online booklist Indigenous Authors Write About Residential Schools here on BookGuide! #indigenouspeoplesday

Recommended by Carrie K.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: Stella's Stellar Hair by Yesenia Moises

Stella’s Stellar Hair

by Yesenia Moises (jP Moises)

 

This book has a cover of a brown-skinned girl with big, curly hair. We can also see a few outlines of stars and a little dipper constellation on the cover. This story is set in our solar system with a few planetary facts that complement Stella’s great head of hair. Since Stella has a gala to attend today, she wants her hair to be perfect for the event. Her mom encourages her to visit her aunts, who live on other planets, to see if they can give her the perfect hairdo. Although I wouldn’t necessarily use this to teach about our solar system, I think what it says about the way hair acts in different environments could definitely help a young child understand that their hair is perfect and normal no matter how different it looks from day to day. As a curly-haired reader, I found this book to be very lovely.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Hair Love by Matthew Cherry, Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o, Bedtime Bonnet by Nancy Amanda Redd, Cool Cuts by Mechal Renee Roe, Super Hair-o and the Barber of Doom by John Rocco, Mommy’s Khimar by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow or Crown by Derrick Barnes.]

[ official Yesenia Moises web site ]

 

Recommended by Naomi S.
Eiseley Branch Library

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Booktalk Booklist: Lincoln's Gayest Book Talk 2019

Lane G., from the Bennett Martin Public Library downtown, presented a booktalk at the Gere Branch Library on May 20, 2019, which featured both fiction and non-fiction exploring the LGBTQ+ experience.

Check out the list of titles they shared at the following link: 

Lincoln’s Gayest Book Talk - 2019

New Award Winner List on BookGuide: The Coretta Scott King Awards

New "Award Winner" Booklist

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards have been presented since 1970, by the American Library Association, for outstanding books for children and young adults by African-American authors and illustrators.

The BookGuide reader resources page has added a page to our selection of Award Winners booklists, which includes all the winners of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards from the origin of the award up to the present. Titles owned by the Lincoln City Libraries are hotlinked from within that list. Titles not currently owned by the libraries can be requested through our InterLibrary Loan service.

For many years, there have been "Honor Books" identified which didn't quite win the award, but came close. Our page for this award has links to where you can find lists of these Honor Books.

Check out this list of debut novels at the following link: 

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards

New Customer Review - Jimmy the Greatest

Jimmy the Greatest
by Jairo Buitrago [jP Buitrago]

Jimmy the Greatest is a simple and sweet story about small towns, poverty, and change. Based on the text and the illustrations, one learns that Jimmy is from a coastal town that is so small that it only has a church and a gym. One might guess that the story is about a Latin American town, when one learns that the author and illustrator of this imported picture book are both from Columbia. There is also the reference to an alligator being eaten for lunch, which should signal to most American children that they are reading about another culture. Otherwise, because the location is never named, the story remains universal. The story is about a small poor town, the houses of which are spread far apart on the sandy coast. Its gym is a two-walled wooden structure with an adjacent boxing ring. Some of its citizens ride bicycles, many of them eat fish and fruit, and only a few of them have heard of Mohammed Ali. The gym figures largely in Jimmy's life, who one days tells his mom he wants to become a boxer and that he'll buy her a new icebox when he does. Boys especially will enjoy reading about Jimmy's dream to become a boxer, even if he doesn't have gloves and someone has stolen his shoes. The story is also about change, which is captured in the detailed illustrations The first spread reveals villagers wearing Western clothes, one boy eating ice-cream, and men using nets to hunt fish. As Jimmy grows up and more villagers read, the number of boxing spectators grows in size and a library is built. By the final spread, some villagers have moved to big cities, the town has also grown and become more crowded, and utility poles dot the landscape. There still aren't any elegant houses or fancy things, but villagers aren't sitting around waiting to go somewhere else — and Jimmy plans to stay. What a wonderful message to instill in young people, that one's home can be the greatest place on earth. -- review submitted by Allison H.-F. - a customer of the Bennett Martin Public Library
Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New Customer Reviews appear regularly in the pages of the BookGuide web site. You can visit the Customer Reviews page to see them all and/or submit your own, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually as we receive them.

New Booktalk Booklist - Culturally Diverse Recent and Readables

Here's another booklist from the archive of booktalks presented at various locations of the Lincoln City Libraries. In this case the speaker was Eiseley Branch supervisor Sheila J., who spoke at the Bethany BooksTalk group back in February 2011. [Click here to check out the current schedule of Book Talks.]

Sheila's featured theme was on recently released multicultural titles. Sheila's list includes about 20 fiction, biography and non-fiction titles.

Culturally Diverse Recent and Readables

New Booktalk Booklist: Books From Other Countries

Books From Other Countries

Gere Branch Library, March 16, 2009 and Bethany Branch Library March 20, 2009

Julie B.

Multicultural Works

• Gardens of Water by Alan Drew [2008] events set in Turkey
  The Attack by Yasmina Khadra [2005] events set in Tel Aviv
• The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea [2005] events set in Mexico
• Blackout: An Inspector Espinoza Mystery by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza [2006 (translated in 2008)] events set in Brazil
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri [2004] events set in India
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri [2008] events set in India
• Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi [2008] events set in London
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz [2007] events set in Dominican Republic -- 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner
• Ballykissangel [DVD Ballykissangle] [originally aired 1996-2001] events set in Ireland
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [2008] events set in Sweden
• The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason [2004 (translated in 2007)] events set in Iceland
• My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme [B C4349] [2006] events set in USA, France

Others

• A Never Event: Exposing the Largest Outbreak of Hepatitis C in American Healthcare History by Evelyn McKnight, Travis Bennington [616.362 McK] [2008] historical events set in Fremont, NE
• Still Alice by Lisa Genova [2007] deals with Alzheimers