Birchbark Books and Native Arts

Boozhoo (Boo)

Did she say BOO or BOOts?

My human was all excited and at first I thought it had something to do with me, however, upon closer listening I realized that a rare thing had happened, Heid had enjoyed some fiction! Here's what she said about Linda LeGarde Grover's award-winning new collection of stories:

“The powerful Ojibwe women in Linda LeGarde Grover’s The Dance Boots tell stories in 'the rhythm and pattern of repeating and echoing, re-echoing and returning,' the pattern that keeps them strong. They need to be strong in the face of a terrible monster, one no less ferocious than those in Ojibwe traditional tales, one that steals children and returns them altered, alien, broken: the boarding schools. These are stories of survival as well, and as we follow the rhythm of her narrative we find ourselves joining the dance of a culture resurgent, a dance that returns lost children, that begins to heal a world.”

Boo is hoping this LeGarde Grover woman wears boots when she visits Birchbark Books on September 17th to debut her Flannery O'Connor Award winning book. Boo will want to take a good, long, snuffling sniff on these boots!

Generally, I’m a quiet lap dog.  But there’s one thing that really grrrs me. At night, in summer, IT wakes me. Then I cannot contain myself, but startle the entire household: GUH-GUH-GRRRRR! My human family stumbles out to flash their light on IT. Then they laugh at the staggering intruder, lolling on the garage roof, stained with fermented mullberries. I am not amused.

Humans, however will enjoy The Raccoon and the Bee Tree by Charles A. Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman.  With lively illustrations by Susan Turnbull, the book is ideal for the beginning reader (or the read-to). Originally included in a 1909 book of Dakota tales, Wigwam Evenings, by Charles Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman, the story is reborn a hundred years later.  A tale of tempting honey (I’d rather snap at bees myself) and the dangers of rowdy behavior (I am, as I’ve said, a restrained creature---except toward raccoons) this is a story as timeless as it is sweet.

Boo is an indiscriminate reader. Anything and everything goes. For this reason she recommends Foyle's Further Philavery, a treasury of unusual words, collected by Christopher Foyle. Everybody needs a word that nobody else knows! A fabulous vocabulary is the wardrobe of the mind. To define "scunner", "fabiform", "lollop", and "litten", turn to Foyle's Further Philavery.