Skip to main content

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian


Summary:
"Junior" Arnold Spirit is a Native American teenager living on the rez in Spokane, WA. His coming of age story focuses on the poverty and alcoholism that goes hand in hand with living on the reservation. Junior is frustrated with the unfairness of the inequity between his school and other off reservation schools and his diary follows his decision to transfer to a different high school where he feels he can find better opportunities to improve his future and the problems and triumphs that arise as a result of this decision.

Strengths:
What I really found compelling about this book was how Junior's frustration and his world view is so well communicated. Junior sees the obvious disparity between his life and the life of others outside the reservation. He is keenly aware of the effect of alcoholism and poverty on the lives of his family and friends. Unlike many in his situation, instead of shrugging it off as "the way things are," Junior takes his life into his own hands and makes the difficult decision to leave the familiar behind and enter a world where he truly is one of a kind. The unflinchingly real look at the differences in the mindset and expectations of children and parents living in poverty and those in middle or upper class made this book both heartbreaking and incredibly important.

If you liked this book, you may also enjoy:

 The Diary of Anne Frank
Reservation Blues

Alexie, S., & Forney, E. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little,
Brown. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

El Deafo

Summary:  When 4 year old Cece gets meningitis, her parents are scared. But she recovers and everything seems like it is going to be just fine, until they discover that Cece has suffered permanent hearing loss. Told through a graphic novel, Cece Bell's somewhat autobiographical story stars a world of bunnies where Cece navigates her first grade year while dealing with her deafness, wearing a hearing aid and making friends. She copes by creating an alter ego for herself, "El Deafo", the hearing aid wearing superhero. In the end, Cece gains confidence and learns to be more assertive with other people who just don't understand how their interactions with her can have an effect. Strengths: This graphic novel is geared towards a younger set of readers than most of the books I will be reviewing this fall in this blog, but it still has some value and strengths for the young adult reader. The theme of dealing with being different will resonate with young adult readers,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bloom's Taxonomy for a Digital Age

Bloom's Taxonomy. One of the things we are constantly hearing in our school is the push for increased rigor in our classroom, as a result of the STAAR tests and others like it becoming more rigorous. We are told to push for higher order thinking and questioning from our students. One of the tools we use to look at how we can increase rigor is Bloom's Taxonomy. But some things about Bloom's don't translate exactly when we are talking about the digital age and the classroom or library. For example, remembering is the lowest piece of the triangle for Bloom's, but remembering looks different when you have instant access to a powerful computer that can use essentially limitless online resources to find answers. I've mentioned to my husband just how much more this and future generations will know about the world around them simply because they no longer have to remember everything they're interested in knowing. If I pass a historical marker for a place I haven...
7 comments
Read more

Library Communication and Social Media

When social media became a "thing", businesses were one of the first entities to jump on board. Many companies realized that social media created an essentially free way to advertise. As social media developed, targeted marketing using social media became an even more effective way to communicate and advertise with specific consumer bases. Educational entities eventually got on board as well. What does this have to do with your library? Plenty. Let's take a look at most popular social media platforms - Facebook and Twitter, and how they are being used by libraries to promote and communicate with their clients as well as help educate and connect library staff members worldwide. Stay tuned for a future post on the social media platform that is ahead of Twitter in teen use, Instagram. Facebook The brain child of Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard classmates, Facebook was created in 2004 as a way for college students to connect online. Myspace, a Facebook predecessor, had al...
3 comments
Read more