Debby Dahl Edwardson is an author is far northern Alaska! I recently discovered her website and fell in love with her topic and motivation to write: Young Children of an aboriginal People the Iñupiat.
In all honesty I started studying the People of the Far North when it didn't fit my story for the North American Tribes to meet up with the Vikings. That was when I learned about the Inuit and have been studying them ever since. They are an interesting people and a very different culture. I think it has to be to be able to survive in their world. It is just that, like another world. And then again it isn't so different. They have the same problems we have, the same insecurities and joys of children. It is sometimes when we see the differences in people, that we realize we aren't so different.
I used the Inuit in my story and had searched for books about them. I think that my husbands tribe, the White Mountain Apache, could relate to this story. The older generations were shipped off to BIA schools. Children need literature that is about their people!
It frightens me that that people and publishers are saying that fiction is being taken out of schools. The core curriculum focuses on non-fiction. I asked my fifth grade son's teacher what books they would be reading in class and she said with the core curriculum there is no time to read fiction literature. I think it is up to the teacher to make time. I know that NJ has been following the core curriculum and they still found time to read wonderful fiction stories like, "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman, and "The Family Under the Bridge" by Natalie Savage Carlson.
flipping over and tearing apart.
Changing everything.
We were there.
We were always there.
They say no one survived the ice age but they’re wrong.
There were seven ice ages and we survived.
We survived them all . . ."
"Debby Edwarson’s My Name is Not Easy brought me to tears as I remembered the loneliness and confusion I felt when I left my home and family in Arctic Alaska for boarding school thousands of miles away. This young adult novel evokes a time and place in the Alaska Native World that is important to remember, when far off governments and powerful institutions made decisions that began to change our world, challenging us to find new ways to survive. It is an excellent work of fiction with important truths to be remembered."
I just ordered her book, "MY NAME IS NOT EASY."
BOOK REVIEW WILL BE POSTED...
This is from her website about the book. It was a National Book Award Finalist in 2011!
"The elders say the earth has turned over seven times, pole to pole, north to south.
Freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing,flipping over and tearing apart.
Changing everything.
We were there.
We were always there.
They say no one survived the ice age but they’re wrong.
There were seven ice ages and we survived.
We survived them all . . ."
"Debby Edwarson’s My Name is Not Easy brought me to tears as I remembered the loneliness and confusion I felt when I left my home and family in Arctic Alaska for boarding school thousands of miles away. This young adult novel evokes a time and place in the Alaska Native World that is important to remember, when far off governments and powerful institutions made decisions that began to change our world, challenging us to find new ways to survive. It is an excellent work of fiction with important truths to be remembered."
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