A young Ojibway girl, struggling over the fact that her father has died, spends a summer in the bush with her grandmother and finds her own identity and voice. Things have been hard for her family since her father's accidental death in a logging accident, and Ray has been unable to express her grief. In school, the green eyes she inherited from her father are unusual for a child from an Ojibway background in a northern Ontario town and get her noticed in ways she doesn't enjoy. At home, Ray believes that her mother, grieving herself and busy with Ray's younger brother and sister, no longer needs her. Ray becomes so withdrawn that at times she hardly speaks. At the end of this beautiful and empowering story, which begins in 1978, the withdrawn green-eyed girl has found her voice and is not afraid to use it.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-Part of a series designed to provide Canadian children of neither French nor English descent with novels mirroring their own life experiences, this book tells the story of a the child of an Ojibway mother and a Caucasian father. Ray, 10, feels out of place in her own skin, and the death of her father and her family's subsequent poverty further serve to separate her from her peers. The girl tells of her anger and isolation. She states that the children at school do not like her, that the teachers do not understand her, but the action does not illustrate these circumstances. Ray eventually becomes estranged from her family when her mother marries a man with two sons of his own. Her only solace comes from visits to her grandmother, a medicine woman who lives a nomadic existence in the wilderness. Unfortunately, a potentially interesting coming-of-age story is hindered by narration in the passive voice that tells, rather than shows, the actions and emotions of the characters. The plot meanders seemingly without purpose until Ray realizes that her grandmother has chosen her as a prot‚g‚. Feeling accepted and needed, she finds peace. Because her angst is never really felt by readers, the resolution falls flat.
Rita Hunt Smith, Hershey Public Library, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Rita Hunt Smith, Hershey Public Library, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Ruby Slipperjack has three novels to her credit: Weesquachak and the Lost Ones, Silent Words, and Honour the Sun. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, and received the William A. West Education Medal for being the highest-ranking Masters of Education graduate at Lakehead University. She is also an accomplished visual artist and a certified First Nations hunter.
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