From Publishers Weekly
Even a cursory glance at this handsome debut volume lets readers know that it is no ordinary picture book. The blue cloth jacket, with its rounded corners and stamped border design, artfully suggests the eponymous ledger, as does the ruled inset that bears the title-written in script, as is all the text-and a distinctive, childlike illustration. Opening the book-not vertically but horizontally-reveals sumptuous marbled endpapers that enclose a journal kept by Thomas Blue Eagle, a (fictitious) Sioux lad who learned "the white man's language and his skills" at the Carlisle (Penna.) Indian School-an institution, as noted in the book's afterword, that existed from 1879 to 1918. The journal's entries, which are written across the pages' lines rather than on them, range from informative to poignant to humorous ("The first time I saw a white man I thought he was sick because he was so pale"); and all exude a child's guilelessness ("The white man broke the treaties. We went to war"). Inspired by the picture stories of 19th-century Plains Indians, Cvijanovic's vivid pictographic illustrations are outstanding, speaking volumes even as they, too, remain perfectly childlike. Uncommon artistry combined with thoughtful research have produced a work of rare quality and merit. Ages 8-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-8-This book looks convincingly like a drawn and written record made by a student at the historic Carlisle Indian School in the late 19th century, but it is in fact a work of fiction. Thomas describes aspects of his life on the plains with his beloved pony, Two Painted Horse. A Crow raid and his own successful coup against a white trapper provide narrative incident. Most of the story involves the boy's adjustment to the school, where he learns the white man's ways without rejecting his own. But for whom is he creating this account? Why does he describe his still-viable culture in the past tense? And, most important, why interpolate a fantastic incident from Lakota legend (better retold in Rosebud Yellow Robe's Tonweya and the Eagles [Dial, 1992]) into an otherwise realistic account? Such questions may hardly occur to readers taken with the look of this book-its copperplate, hand-written text and the "aged," colorful, pictograph-like art. Everything so suggests an authentic document (the authors' research and a Lakota advisor further vouch for the background veracity) that the inconspicuous fictional disclaimer at the back may be overlooked. If the volume's loose narrative cohesion is also verisimilar, the liveliness and interest of the art is a real counterweight.
Patricia (Dooley) Lothrop Green, St. George's School, Newport, RICopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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