Weaving a California Tradition: A Native American Basketmaker (We Are Still Here) (Library Binding)

~ (Author), Dugan Aguilar (Illustrator) "for Corly Tex and her family, basketmaking is more than just a craft or a beautiful art form..." (more)
Key Phrases: Western Mono, California Indian, Basketweavers Showcase

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-6. Text and photographs combine to explain the tradition of basket weaving as carried on among the Native American tribes of California. Readers follow Carly Tex, an 11-year-old Western Mono, to school, to lessons in traditional basket weaving, and to many stops along the way. Carly and her relatives are shown to be very much a part of modern America, as well as a continuing bridge between their own cultural past and the future. Although basket weaving, from the gathering and preparing of materials to the final product, is the main focus of the book, many other traditions are touched upon?even some that have been newly adopted from other native tribes. Clear, bright full-color photographs appear on every page, filled with warmth and showing the pride Carly and her family feel about difficult tasks done well. A few black-and-white drawings supplement the photographs. Unfortunately, some of the technical aspects of preparing the weaving materials are too complicated for young non-weavers to follow from the text alone, and illustrations of these techniques are not included.?Darcy Schild, Schwegler Elementary School, Lawrence, KS
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

TITLR A Native American Basketmaker.YAmane, Linda. Gr. 3^-6. The latest photo-essay in the We Are Still Here series (another is Susan Braine's Drumbeat--Heartbeat: A Celebration of the Powwow, 1995) introduces 11-year-old Western Mono Indian Carly Tex as she learns the ancient art of basket weaving from her mother and aunts. Yamane recounts the Tex family's expeditions to gather natural materials such as redbud and sedge, shows typical decorations used in California Indian weaving, and explains two techniques--coiling and twining. She emphasizes the time and effort involved, which allows most weavers to complete only one or two baskets per year. She also describes Carly's home, school, and family, pointing out that her life is similar to other American girls her age. Frequent, clear full-color photographs add interest, and several black-and-white drawings clarify the weaving process. Appended with a glossary and a bibliography, this will be useful for multicultural units and a treat for browsers.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Library Binding: 48 pages
• Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822526603
• ISBN-13: 978-0822526605
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,063,647 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine account of California Indian life today, great photos, June 8, 1997

By A Customer

This is the latest -- and one of the best -- of Lerner's unique "We're Still Here" series of Native American books for young people. The general structure of all these books is that they are written and photographed by tribal members. Each book follows a tribal young person -- here a girl, sometimes a boy -- of age from 11 - 14 through some daily life and some special activities. Contacts and knowledge of the tribal author always result in clear focus, accurate contemporary cultural portrayals, and bits of history interwoven in accurate and inoffensive ways.

This book is perhaps Lerner's best to date. Author Yamane is a California Rumisen Ohlone, herself a basketweaver and one of the founders (and a current officer) in the large and very active California Indian Basketweavers' Association. Too, she is a talented and sensitive writer of another book -- Ohlone legends, painstakingly reconstructed from old recordings made in Spanish. She is able to convey -- clearly and interestingly -- the plant gathering, preparation, and weaving techniques that 11-year-old Carly Tex learns from her relatives. Photographer Aguilar has a tribally mixed heritage: California Maidu and Pit River, and Nevada Walker River Paiute; his extensive photography studies result in better-composed and (naturally) lighted color photos than are usual in this series, though none are amateur.

We meet Carly's family and learn something of contemporary Mono life, most of it applicable to other small, surviving California Indian tribes. We attend a powwow with Carly and her sisters. Close-up photos and drawings show the traditional basketweaving techniques Carly is learning, and we see her first completed baskets. High point of the book -- as no doubt it was for Carly -- is her attendance at the annual California Indian Basketweavers' gathering, where traditional basketry is shown and judged by expert elders from many tribes. At the gathering, baskets are not just on show, they are used. Pictures and text show cooking of traditional acorn-meal mush in a watertight cooking basket, once the method by which all hot foods were cooked by California peoples.

As in all this series, we also see that Indian young people, despite participation in interests and activities of their cultural heritage, are not quaintly isolated from modern life, as if in museum dioramas. Carly rides a bike, wearing typical pre-teen clothing, near her house, works with computers at school, hangs out with friends, plays European musical instruments (flute and piano). This contrasts sharply to how a competent but non-Indian writer handled basketry ("The Basketmaker and the Spinner") as an archaic bit of history centered on a fictional long-ago child, surrounded by antique tribal people wearing loincloths in a pre-contact-style village of bark houses.

This book points up the fact that Indian writers can do better jobs on this kind of book, not because of some mystic notion of blood influence on writing, but because they know and are part of the cultures they write about, hence can do so interestingly and accurately without the whiff of a museum diorama, bringing to life in print what is alive in fact. Lerner seems unique among publishers of books for children and schools, in having learned that this isn't a matter of PC-ism, but makes for good writing, good books.

Traditional basketmaking, a demanding craft that puts the weaver in direct touch with the earth and its plants, the seasons when they must be gathered, the long preparation times for roots, long shoots or withes, is the heart of the book, and Yamane, Carly, her mother and aunts all convey the absorbing interest and delicate precision of the work, as well as good times going gathering.

Nobody's wearing loincloths, or what those anthro types like to describe (for California Indian women) as "little aprons," everybody wears jeans. Carly's mom has on a particularly nifty dusty purple jacket, as she holds a laced-up bundle of redbud shoots. There are occasional touches of Indian contemporary culture in some photos. Carly's Dad, for instance, is usually shown wearing a visored cap -- but a close look shows it has been beaded in an elaborate beadwork design (a Plains reservation fad that's made its way all over Indian Country; there are also beaded sneakers and tennies). He probably made it himself; he does beadwork, and says his patterns are influenced by "generations of basketweavers in his family."

--Reviewed by Paula Giese, editor, Native Americna Books website, http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/books/bookmenu.html