![]() Her brother, either because he loved her so much or because he was ashamed of himself, also jumps off the cliff and is transformed into the first male seal. 19) she throws herself in the sea and is transformed into the first female seal. One night, she decides to scratch his face so she'll see, in the morning, who it is. Because it is dark, she doesn't know who it is. One night a man goes into her room and "forced himself on her" (p. Many of the men in the village want to marry her. In his story, a beautiful young girl is of age to marry. She pleads excitedly with him to tell her, again, "the story of the first seals" (p. There's one point where Kiska's uncle is skinning a seal. Right away in chapter one, the story moves from Kiska-the-grandma to Kiska-the-teen. On page 44, he writes that "the word baidarka is of Russian origin, while the Unangan (Aleut) word is Igyax." Why did Smelcer's character say baidarka is the Aleut word? He clearly knows otherwise. I consulted several sources, including Smelcer's Alutiiq Dictionary, published in 2011. There, I received an immediate comment that baidarka is a Russian word. Update, Nov 12, 6:00 AM-I shared this review on Facebook. If part of what Kiska/Smelcer are doing is to teach some Indigenous words using story, it would have been appropriate to use baidarka throughout, rather than revert to kayak. We can read that as her attempt to teach her granddaughter their language, but she only uses baidarka that one time. On page 16, for example, Kiska says that their word for kayak is baidarka. Making the granddaughter ignorant makes it possible for the author (Smelcer) to write for a similarly ignorant audience of readers. Kiska speaks to her granddaughter in a way that suggests that the granddaughter knows little, if anything, about being Aleut and nothing about 1942. In chapter one, we meet Kiska as a grandmother who is telling her 13-year-old granddaughter what happened to her in 1942 when she was 13 years old. Informed by true events, this is the story of a teenage girl who steps up when her people need a hero. naval ship arrives to evacuate everyone in her village to an internment camp almost 2,000 miles away-where they are forgotten. Kiska’s home in the Aleutian Islands is a peaceful paradise until Japan invades in 1942. Let's start with the description (from Amazon): Will it accurately reflect their people, past and present, and their experiences-good and bad? And, what will a book do to non-Native children? Will it give them reliable information about the people who are depicted in the book? The answers to those questions are why I do not recommend Kiska. What will the content of a book do to Native children, particularly the children who are of the identity the characters are meant to be. When I review a children's book, I consider impact. These stories are often highlighted and even exalted, yet one must ask what was the impact on the indigenous people. There are stories of eighteenth-century Russian fur hunters, of the brave miners who came to Alaska in the late nineteenth century to discover gold, of the companies that developed salmon canneries, and, in the twentieth century, of the oil companies that worked together to build the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, one of the engineering marvels of the twentieth century. The history of Alaska is often told from the perspective of outsiders and those who view the resources of Alaska as amazing treasures to exploit. One resource I was pointed to is The Alaska Native Reader (2009), edited by Maria Sháa Tláa Williams. Here's a paragraph (I highlighted the end of the last sentence (Kindle Locations 62-66): I learned that the preferred name for the people I was asking about is Unangan. In fact, most people don't know much about the Indigenous people of Alaska.Īs I began the background research to review Kiska, I wrote to colleagues and writers in Alaska to ask about the internment of the Aleut people. My guess is that most people do not know that Native peoples of Alaska were removed from their villages during World War II. Rather than repeat what she said in her excellent review, I'm going to focus on a couple of things: the seal story and the dramatic character of Smelcer's story. Green sent me an in-depth review of his book. Back in September when I received an advanced reader copy of Smelcer's book, I tweeted as I read it. I'll start by saying I do not recommend Kiska. Published by Leapfrog Press, John Smelcer's Kiska was released in November of 2017. ![]()
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