Miranda's Last Stand (Harper Trophy) [Paperback]

Gloria Whelan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000 | Age Level: 8 and up

It's a dream come true for Miranda and her mother when Buffalo Bill asks them to join his legendary Wild West Show. Soon, Miranda finds herself taking part in a glittering world - befriending and Indian girl, meeting Annie Oakley, and even performing in the show. But Mama stews in her hatred of the Indians. all of whom she blames for her husband's death. And when the famous Sioux chief Sitting Bull appears at the show, and Mama threatens to leave, Miranda must battle a hatred that cuts to the core of American history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Returning to territory she explored in The Indian School, Whelan explores the tensions between settlers and Native Americans in this uneven tale, narrated by a girl who becomes involved with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. In 1876, when Miranda was two, her father fought with Custer in the Seventh Cavalry and was killed at the battle of Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull and his warriors. Eight years later, Miranda inherits a farmhouse from her grandparents, and her mother takes a fortuitous offer to join William Cody's show as a scenery painter in order to earn the money to restore the farm. Her mother has always told her that all Indians are bad, but when Miranda gets to know some of the Lakota Sioux who take part in the show (particularly three children close to her own age), she begins to doubt her mother's assertion. Displeased with Miranda's new friendships, her mother grows even angrier when she learns that Sitting Bull is soon to join the company. Whelan uses an accessible first-person narrative and polished, easy prose filled with behind-the-scenes details ("There was a flourish in all he did, like the curlicues people put into their writing," Miranda says of Buffalo Bill) to evoke the feel of Cody's Wild West show. An appearance by Annie Oakley and other details fill in the historical context, but the novel skimps on character development, and the plotting often seems contrived to deliver the feel-good message. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Grade 4-7-After her mother is hired by Buffalo Bill Cody to paint backdrops for his Wild West Show, Miranda encounters some Indian children whom she gradually realizes are the relatives of the men who killed her father in the Battle of Little Big Horn. As an account of one girl's gradual coming to terms with the loss of her father and understanding the plight of the Sioux, the novel has merit. Unfortunately, it completely ignores the painful and harsh ways in which they were exploited. Most of the Indian children are portrayed with good English skills, but their mother speaks stereotypical pidgin diction. Sitting Bull's interpreted speech has tremendous dignity and power, and seems strangely at odds with the rest of the narrative in mood. The characters lack those foibles and quirks that help them to spring to life and walk off the page, and the reverence readers are to feel for Sitting Bull distances them rather than pulls them into the tragedy of a great leader working a dog-and-pony show to entertain the very people he had fought for his own country. It is a tightrope to walk between telling a good story with immediacy and being completely respectful of people who once lived public lives. Unfortunately, Whelan fails to engage readers completely on either level.
Carol A. Edwards, Sonoma County Library, Santa Rosa, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 131 pages
• Publisher: HarperTrophy (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0064420973
• ISBN-13: 978-0064420976
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,105,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miranda's Last Stand, January 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Miranda's Last Stand (Hardcover)

By page 3 of this wise, honorable and lovely book, Great Lakes Book Award winner Gloria Whelan gives us both a serious problem and a mystery. We are hooked. Miranda is a 10-year-old whose artist mother is the widow of a cavalryman killed at Little Big Horn. Narrator of what happens before and afer her nearly penniless mother signs on as backdrop painter for Buffalo Bill's touring Wild West Show, she is entirely believable. The sometimes rebelious conclusions she draws along her story's way are never wise beyond her years. Her speech is that of an artist's daughter. ["There was a flourish in all (Wild Bill Cody) did, like the curlicues people put in their writing." The eyes of the Sioux girl who befriends her on Cody's show "were the color of brown stones shining in water." Frost leaves flowers looking like wet mops.] Readers Miranda's age will like her. MIRANDA'S LAST STAND begins with a brilliantly vivid and succinct presentation of the whites' point of view after the Battle of Little Big Horn. Then with the dry perception, lively but careful historical detail, and beautiful but never intrusive lyric passages that one can expect from Gloria Whelan, we are subtly led toward another point of view--that of Sitting Bull's Sioux. Exploring her grandparents' Dakota Territory farm, Miranda comments about the creatures whose nests and burrows she comes upon, "Everywhere I looked, something was there before us." Then she finds an arrowhead. Miranda travels just as far in her mind as in the Company of Wild Bill Cody, and both journeys are conveyed by Gloria Whelan as smoothly as if she had seen and done everything she writes about. In a clear but unforced way, she makes the reader see the problems, moral and physical, of young people like Miranda and her new friend Quick Fox, whose people want the same space and haven't found a way to share it--problems Miranda's readers face today.

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book., June 23, 1999

By 

Rebecca Herman (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Miranda's Last Stand (Hardcover)

Miranda was just two when her papa died at the Battle of Little Bighorn, eight years ago. Her mama has hated Indians ever since, and so has Miranda. When they join the Wild West Show, Miranda's views change. But will her mother's ever? This was a very good book.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, not good, December 18, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Miranda's Last Stand (Harper Trophy) (Paperback)

I had to read this book for my history class and it wasn't the best. The starting is really slow and boring, but it gets better around the middle. The book is not too good, but its not horrible. Her dad died at about age 2 and she and her mother have hated the indians. Then they are in the Wild West Show with indians and their fathers killer. Life is hard for them.