VVMBookBlog

Mitch is 12 and spending the summer with his mother at his grandparents’ house at Bird Lake.  His parents have separated and he’s trying to adjust to life without his father and an uncertain future.  Spencer is 10 and comes to spend the summer with his parents, younger sister, and dog, Jasper, in a home next door to Mitch on Bird Lake.  It’s the first time his family has been there since his older brother drowned in that lake when Mitch was two.

Chapter alternate between Mitch and Spencer telling the story each from their perspective.  Tensions between Mitch’s mother and grandparents cause him to want to live next door with his mother, but when Spencer’s family move in, he comes up with ways to scare them into leaving.  Then we read about Spencer’s reactions to those tactics.

There’s no big dramatic action here but we can really get into the boys’ heads to experience the pain and confusion they are both feeling.  Read Olive’s Ocean for more by this author.

14-year-old Arnold “Junior” Spirit is a Spokane Indian who has lived on the “rez” all his life.  He has an older sister whom he admires very much and a mother and father who love him, even though his father is a chronic alcoholic. Arnold has several disabilities due to his hydrocephaly or water on the brain, and has some physical conditions that make him a target for bullying.  And he has a talent for cartooning.

Arnold has always attended the school on the reservation but a classroom incident in the first days of his 9th grade year prompts one of his teachers to recommend that he leave the rez school for a better school–the nearest public school 22 miles away.  Now branded as a traitor to his reservation family, Arnold faces the many challenges to being a reservation Indian in a very white school.  He doesn’t back down from any challenge and doors open for him in every situation.

In spite of some tough social and living conditions in Arnold’s life, this book is funny, fun to read and hopeful.  It’s definitely for more mature readers who can read beyond just the words to the amazingly courageous person that is Arnold.