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Native American Heritage Month | Young Adult

Book descriptions came from NovelList

A Girl Called Echo by Katherena Vermette  

Graphic Novel

Echo Desjardins, a 13 year-old Metis girl, is struggling with her feelings of loneliness while attending a new school and living with a new foster family. Then an ordinary day in Mr. Bee’s history class turns extraordinary and Echo’s life will never be the same. During Mr. Bee’s lecture, Echo finds herself transported to another time and place–a bison hunt on the Saskatchewan prairie–and back again to the present 

Apple in the Middle by Dawn Quigley 

Book

Apple in the Middle is a coming-of-age novel with an unexpected look at what happens when two cultures collide and our only tour guide is a quirky, offbeat outcast. 

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth (NF) 

Book

The term “Apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country. It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Eric Gansworth tells the story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. 

Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones 

Book

Fire Song tells about the struggles of two Indigenous gay teenagers trying to find their place in the world. 

Give Me Some Truth by Eric Gansworth 

Book

In 1980, life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists–but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves. 

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith 

Book

Breaking up with her first real boyfriend when he makes racist remarks about her Native American heritage, high school senior Louise Wolfe teams up with a fellow school newspaper editor to cover a multicultural casting of the school play and the racial hostilities it has exposed. 

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline  

Book

Grades 8-12 In this futuristic dystopian novel for teens, the Indigenous people of North America are on the run in a fight for survival. 

This Place: 150 Years Retold by Various Authors   

Graphic Novel

Graphic Novel: An anthology of stories from Canada’s 150 years told from an Indigenous perspective. 

Walking in Two Worlds by Wab Kinew (soon to be on order) 

Book

When Bugz, who is caught between the worlds of life on the Rez and the virtual world, meets Feng, they form an instant bond as outsiders and gamers and must both grapple with the impact of family challenges and community trauma. 

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