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I spent much of yesterday with Dovie Thomason. She was at UIUC's Spurlock Museum for it's annual storytelling event.

I'd be willing to bet that most people---when they think of Native stories---think of stories about animals. That isn't a bad thing, but it isn't the only kind of story Native people tell.

Recently, Dovie is telling a very different story.

You can get her Lessons from the Animal People, or her Fireside Tales: More Lessons from the Animal People, or Wopila, a Giveaway: Lakota Stories from Oyate.

You can invite her to your school, or your college, or city, or performing arts center, to tell the stories of the Animal People.

But, consider inviting her to tell the story she told here yesterday: The Spirit Survives: The Boarding School Experience, Then and Now.

As she started, she said "There are some stories you don't want to tell your children. And, there are some you have to."

The story she's telling is among the too-many dark episodes in U.S. history about the ways this country has treated American Indians... It is among the stories that are completely left out of textbooks used in elementary or high school.

It is about Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in 1879. The school was designed to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." In her story, she talks about being at Carlisle a few years ago, with her daughter, standing in the cemetery, reading the headstones there. Headstones of children who were at that school.

To get in touch with Dovie, write to her at this address:
Dovie Thomason
P.O. Box 6351
Harrisburg, PA 17112
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Pointing you, today, to an interview at papertigers.org. In the interview (conducted by Aline Pereira) Cree writer Larry Loyie talks about his life, his books, and his views on books about First Nations people.



Back in July of 2006, I included his As Long as the Rivers Flow in a short list of books about boarding schools that I recommend. Since then, I've read Nicola Campbell's Shi-Shi-Etko and also highly recommend it. Read a review of her book here.

If you've got Ann Rinaldi's My Heart is On the Ground, replace it with As Long as the Rivers Flow. And if you've got Eve Bunting's Cheyenne Again, replace it with Nicola Campbell's Shi-shi-etko. Rinaldi and Bunting are well-established writers, but both missed the mark in their books about boarding schools. Keeping their books means, in effect, continuing a long history of mis-educating readers about American Indian and First Nations history, culture, and life. You have the option of providing your students with better books. It sounds corny, but I'll say it anyway: Seize that opportunity!
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When Zoe Sharp gets recruited for the swanky Allbright Academy by none other than Secretary of State Martha Evergood, she says that she will not attend without her twin brother J.D. and her older sister Franny. All of them are relatively freaked out by the 2 days of testing, but thanks to Zoe's moxie, they all end up on the picturesque campus, and are thinking that this opportunity is too good to be true.

Franny is bothered at first by the perfection of the place. Everyone seems flawless in appearance and in habits. Who has every heard of a perfectly clean dorm that houses 6th-12th graders? But eventually she gets over it. She is realizing her potential and changing her ways with the help of her PD (personal development) counselor. Her grades are climbing, her room is neat, and she wants her friends to do as well as she is doing. Cal looks amazing, compared to when Franny first met her, and she's much more positive, and Brooklyn is changing his name to Brook and cutting off his dreads so that people will take him seriously.

Franny, Cal and Brooklyn are a threesome whenever it's possible. They sign up for the same field trips and the same PE option. One day while they are on their PE hike, Cal doubles over in pain. Franny, Brooklyn and Cal try to carry her back to the dorms for help. It turns out Cal's appendix has burst and she needs emergency surgery. Cal is out of the picture for weeks.

When Cal comes back, she is different. Very different. And she has a theory about why this is. Is Allbright Academy exerting control over it's students? How is this being accomplished?

Franny, Cal and Brooklyn are soon knee deep in a mystery that has enormous repercussions. Can a school drug its students and get away with it?

Diane Stanley has written and fun, intriguing and fast paced mystery with a hook every kid who has ever gone to school will love. The cover is spot on, and I've had many middle schoolers reach for my arc over the last week. Mystery lovers, and fans of boarding school fiction will approve!

Best friends Lissa Dragomir and Rose Hathaway are on the run from their boarding school St. Vladimir's Academy, hiding from the well-meaning but misguided Guardians of the school and the evil vampires the Strigoi.  Lissa is a Moroi princess,

   When a tracker marks her as a fledgling vampire, Zoey Redbird is afraid her life is over.  It could be if her body rejects the Change.  As a vampire fledgling, she must attend the House of Night, a boarding school where she wil