Red Bird

From Publishers Weekly Although several nonfiction titles have recently explored the modern-day powwow (Dancing Rainbows, Cobblehill; Powwow Summer, Carolrhoda), this fictionalized account is a worthy addition to the shelf. Katie, a city girl, travels with her family to the annual Nanticoke powwow. (The Nanticoke, an Algonquian tribe, live primarily in southern Delaware.) Mitchell (Down Buttermilk Lane) details the powwow's events, focusing on Katie's observations and reactions. She goes with great excitement and a sense of homecoming: "Down the sandy roadside, the drums call Katie's name: Red Bird... RED BIRD. 'Katie' fades away. She is Red Bird, Nanticoke Daughter." After the powwow, she sheds her beaded, fringed leather dress and returns to the city, but "the heartbeat of The People stays with her all year long." The exhilaration of the powwow, tempered by its brevity, makes for a bittersweet afterglow; but Doney's (The Stone Lion) vivid, sun-dappled oils supply a joyful intensity. One spread, of the Nanticoke before the white settlers came, is "yellowed" with age?moving and exquisite. Ages 5-up. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal Kindergarten-Grade 4?Katie and her parents live in the city. When September arrives, her mother takes a trunk out of the attic and gathers up Katie's dance regalia for the family trip to the annual Nanticoke Powwow near Millboro, DE. As their car draws near the farm where the powwow is held, Katie hears the drums and begins to feel more like Red Bird, which is her Indian name. Camping next to grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, Red Bird joins in the dancing and listens to her grandparents' stories before heading home at the end of the weekend. Although several photo essays of contemporary powwows (usually in the West) have been published in recent years, this title is unique because it is about an Eastern powwow, and because the illustrations are accurate oil paintings rather than photos. The warm and woodsy double-page art is right on target in conveying the sights of powwows along the East coast. This wonderful offering captures the setting, style of dress, and even the frequent multiracial makeup of many of these nations. Despite one oddly off-base illustration of Nanticokes fishing for crabs that includes Plains tipis instead of longhouses, this book is a fine addition.?Lisa Mitten, University of Pittsburgh, PACopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.