Plaintive tones of a flute, with accompanying drum, begin each tape. Littrell's voicing and tone belong to the kind of reader children love, the librarian or teacher who pulls them into a story. They play chess and are thankful for the smallpox vaccine that limits an epidemic. Indians attend the Catholic mission school and purchase trade goods: cloth, buttons, needles, scissors, and decorative beads. Omakayas's father, a trader, is of mixed blood.

To survive, everyone must help with the hard work, such as scraping a smelly moose hide, child care, carrying water, and the harvesting and processing of wild rice and maple sugar. The Birchbark House can be included in a unit on indigenous peoples, North American history, or social studies units on ecology. She experiences spirituality and honoring, ghost stories and other story-telling, the power of dreams and mythology, healing arts, relationships with animals, and a rich, extended family life. Omakayas enjoys a pet crow, curls up in skins to keep warm in winter, loses her baby brother to smallpox, and endures a bothersome brother named Pinch.

In this excellent choice for family listening, Omakayas, age eight, a member of the Wolf Clan of the Anishinabe division of the Ojibwa, moves through the year 1847 in the Lake Superior area. MLA style: 'The Birchbark House.' The Free Library.In between, Omakayas fights with her annoying little. Serving homemade breakfasts, sandwiches, soups and salads and desserts. The beloved and essential Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich includes The Birchbark House, The Game of Silence, The Porcupine Year, Chickadee, and Makoons. Omakayas and her family live on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Though there are growing numbers of white people encroaching on their land, life continues much as it always has.īut the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever-but that will eventually lead Omakayas to discover her calling.īy turns moving and humorous, this novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a gifted writer. Omakayas and her family live on an island in Lake Superior.

She was named Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. This National Book Award finalist by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louise Erdrich is the first installment in an essential nine-book series chronicling 100 years in the life of one Ojibwe family, and includes beautiful interior black-and-white artwork done by the author.

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