My Heart is on the Ground: the Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 [Hardcover]

Ann Rinaldi (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

Acclaimed historical novelist Ann Rinaldi makes her Dear America debut with the diary of a Sioux girl who is sent to a government-run boarding school to learn the white man's customs and language.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-As a potential translator and bridge between two cultures, Nannie Little Rose is assigned by her teacher at the Carlisle Indian School to keep a diary in order to practice and improve her English skills. Beginning in broken English, Nannie tells of her incredibly difficult first year at the school, including entries detailing her previous life as her ability to communicate in English grows. From December, 1879, to October, 1880, readers follow a remarkably resilient girl, uprooted from her home and culture, trying to find a place for herself in a rapidly changing world. Loyal, caring, and creative, she is able to see a spirit helper in a kitchen mouse and willing to defy regulations in mourning the death of her dearest friend. Rinaldi depicts widely divergent cultures with clarity and compassion. Captain Pratt, founder of a school that forcibly strips children of their native culture, also provides vocational training and field trips, and responds to his students as true individuals. The body of the text is followed by an epilogue telling of Nannie's later life, an extensive historical note, and black-and-white photos. The period, the setting, and Nannie herself all come to life. An excellent addition to a popular series.
Faith Brautigam, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin, IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 4^-6. In a "diar-ee" form, written in broken English that realistically grows more polished as the story continues, 12-year-old Nannie Little Rose reflects on her life as a Sioux girl living at a Pennsylvania boarding school for Indian children. Rinaldi draws on material she unearthed about Richard Henry Platt's Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (including stories that appeared in the school's newspaper), to give face to Nannie, whose journal begins on December 1, 1897, and ends the following year in October, when she decides to become a teacher to help her people. The entries are a poignant mix of past and present--Nannie's life with her family, encounters with other students, the horrific death of a friend, the efforts of both well-meaning and misguided adults. They burst with details about culture and custom, adding wonderful texture to this thought-provoking book, which raises numerous questions as it depicts the frustration, the joy, and the confusion of one of yesterday's children growing up in two cultures. A solid addition to the Dear America series. For a similar story, try Shirley Sterling's My Name Is Seepeetza (1997). Stephanie Zvirin

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Inc. (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0590149229
• ISBN-13: 978-0590149228
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #750,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ANN RINALDI is an award-winning author best known for bringing history vividly to life. A self-made writer and newspaper columnist for twenty-one years, Ms. Rinaldi attributes her interest in history to her son, who enlisted her to take part in historical reenactments up and down the East Coast. She lives with her husband in central New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Zero stars for this colonialist fantasy., June 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: My Heart is on the Ground: the Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 (Hardcover)

This is the worst--the very worst--children's book I have ever read. I cannot say this strongly enough--<My Heart Is On the Ground> is more than just a 20th-century Euro-American colonialist fantasy superimposed on a 12-year-old Lakota child in 1880. By maintaining that atrocities never existed at Carlisle Indian Industrial School (where the stated philosophy was "Kill the Indian and Save the Man"), and putting those assertions in the voice of a Lakota child in a book for children, <My Heart Is On the Ground> is the ripping open of a century-long wound in Indian Country. The pain to the Indian families of the children who died at Carlisle is made even worse by Rinaldi's copying the children's names from the tombstones at the Carlisle cemetery and using those names for her characters, including Nannie Little Rose. If this author had written a fictional diary about, say, Auschwitz, and the protagonist's name was, say, Ann Frank, and in this book the author maintained that nothing bad ever happened at Auschwitz, and in this book Ann Frank was released from Auschwitz and went on to become a teacher, would Scholastic have published it? As Nannie Little Rose says, "Maybe so." This insulting whitewash of one of the worst episodes of American history should be immediately recalled and a public apology issued to the Native American community

61 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars this book misrepresents native cultures & experiences, October 27, 1999

By 

Tsianina Lomawaima ([e-mail]) (Tucson, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Heart is on the Ground: the Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 (Hardcover)

As a scholar with 15 years experience in the history of Indian education; and as a native person whose family has been profoundly influenced by my father's childhood in an Indian boarding school (Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma), I am deeply disappointed in this publication. It is depressing that this kind of white fantasy can be passed off as "impeccable and sensitive" native history, in a format that most people cannot distinguish as fiction, because it is so carefully packaged as autobiographical "fact." I am not well grounded in Lakota studies, and will leave those portions of the book that claim to represent Lakota life to others. I would like to comment on the Hopi character, Belle Rain Water, who is highly improbable. Belle draws a "scalping party" for an art class assignment (p. 61). No such thing among Hopis, who are rather renowned pacifists. Why in heaven's name would she pick such a topic, and how would she know what it might look like? Although scalp taking was part of some native societies' military actions (even Hopi, in extraordinary and circumscribed situations) the notion of a "scalping party" is part of white America's fantasy about Indians. In a confrontation between Belle and Nannie (p. 88), Belle calls Nannie a witch. Witchcraft is a dangerous reality in Hopi life, and is taken very seriously. No Hopi would discuss it lightly, or accuse someone face-to-face. The girls go swimming and Belle, swimming nude, taunts their modesty (p. 114). Hopi notions of maidenly modesty in the 19th century did not include girls swimming nude; the whole notion of swimming was problematic for girls for philosophical reasons. Consider the practical problems: where would she have learned? Not at Hopi -- no lakes or swimming pools. On p. 144, Belle tries to make peace with Nannie, and says "we must light the Council Fire." "Council fire" is another white stereotype; it has nothing to do with Hopi cultural or political life. As for Belle's gift to Nannie of a prayer feather -- it is possible Belle might have such a thing at school, and would want to give it to a friend -- but, how could Nannie keep it "in her window"? The staff at Carlisle did not allow native religious belief or practice; why would they have overlooked such a thing? Numerous phrasings in this book reinforce white stereotypes about American Indians. The following examples are self-serving assertions that America's conquest of Indians was inevitable, well-intentioned, and the best thing to happen, all things considered: · The white people are very powerful (p. 7) · "the old ways are done" (p. 24) · Nannie's brother "shames" her by doing a Lakota dance (a "war dance," and done nearly nude, more stereotyping) · "it is as the history teacher said . . . the Sioux people have been conquered" (p. 63) · for the first enrollees at Carlisle, "it was their only chance for a future" (177) Carlisle was not their only chance for a future, as all the non-Carlisle students and their lives attest. The book portrays Indians as backward, defeated victims (and pretty much all as "Plains Indians," who hunted buffalo: p. 175). Legally speaking, the statement on p. 12 attributed to Nannie that the whites "give us" the Black Hills in the Treaty of 1868, is incorrect. Treaties were legal instruments conceived by Europeans to transfer title to lands from one nation to another (among other political uses, such as making a peace). The Treaty of 1868 was a legal instrument by which the Lakota transferred title for ceded lands to the U.S., and reserved or kept the Black Hills. The flash point for many native critics is Rinaldi's use of real children's names taken from Carlisle gravestones: ". . . their personalities came through to me with such force and inspiration, I had to use them. I am sure that in whatever Happy Hunting Ground they now reside, they will forgive this artistic license, and even smile upon it" (p. 196). "Happy Hunting Ground" is an anachronistic, patronizing, stereotypical phrase. Second, the assumption that no living native person needed to be consulted is perfectly clear. Rinaldi is guilty of profound arrogance to assume that dead Indian children would approve of her appropriation of their lives. To conclude -- the focus on Lucy being buried alive. As if it wasn't tough enough to be a student, or to survive being a student at that time. This is "impeccable and sensitive" history? More evidence that the people responsible for this book have not a clue nor care that native people, and descendants of Carlisle students, still live, breathe, and feel. What a shame.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book misrepresents the boarding school experience., April 9, 1999

By 

Barbara Landis ([e-mail]) (Carlisle, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Heart is on the Ground: the Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 (Hardcover)

Ann Rinaldi's book MY HEART IS ON THE GROUND takes the troublesome Lucy Pretty Eagle legend and brings it to life in a shockingly disrespectful attempt to entertain youngsters. Rinaldi presents an historical novel that completely misrepresents the boarding school experience of a young Lakota Sioux girl. Several of her characters bear the actual names of children buried in Indian Cemetery of Carlisle, PA. For many years, the U.S. Army War College's tour booklet of the Carlisle Indian School grounds misidentified the old teachers' quarters as student housing and it was believed that girls had roomed there. Known as the Coren Apartments, these former teachers' quarters are still in use as housing for students of the U.S. Army War College. During the Indian School days, 1879-1918, the girls' dormitory occupied the area directly across the yard from the teachers' quarters, where the tennis courts now stand. For several decades, there have been rumors that Lucy Pretty Eagle haunts her former rooms in the Coren Apartments -- when in truth, Indian girls never lived there. Stories of tennis shoes found mysteriously tied together after a restless night, pictures rearranged on the walls, cooking smells wafting from an empty kitchen, and doors opening and closing in the quarters believed to have been Lucy's home over a hundred years ago - still persist. U.S. Army War College students housed in the Coren Apartments within the past several decades insist their quarters are haunted by "Lucy." Lucy Pretty Eagle came to Carlisle with the name of "Take the Tail" (translated from her native Lakota language). In this book, Ann Rinaldi has fashioned her story around a central character, Nannie Little Rose, and her friend, Lucy Pretty Eagle, modeled after a fictitious, romanticised version of Take the Tail. The publication of this book reminds us that not only was Indian identity shaped by non-Indians during the four decades of Carlisle, Indian identity continues to be defined by non-Indian writers today. These Lucy Pretty Eagle stories embody the one-dimensional Indian stereotypes that so influence mainstream ideas about Indian identity. Until their stories are written by Indian people themselves, these stereotypes will persist