Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
Coming of Age Stories
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Additional recommendations are available from the American Indians in Children's Literature blog and Oyate website.
These stories focus on the transition from childhood to adulthood in historic and contemporary settings, with information about coming-of-age rituals and ceremonies, as well as the challenges and adventures that mark a turning point in the young protagonists' lives.
Children of the Longhouse
In this coming-of-age story, the children of the longhouse are 11-year-old Ohkwa'ri and Itsi:tsia. Twin brother and sister, they live in a Mohawk town in the traditional homelands of what is now eastern New York State in 1491. Reflecting the balance between male and female roles in Iroquois society, the book's chapters alternate between the events and perspectives of Ohkwa'ri and Itsi:tsia, who very definitely see things differently. Bruchac seamlessly incorporates an impressive amount of information about pre-contact Mohawk culture, society, and beliefs, and tells a good story as well. — Oyate
For a Girl Becoming
For a Girl Becoming is a book of beautiful, sensitive poetry and song celebrating a young girl's coming of age. Created by acclaimed Mvskoke/Creek poet, writer, and musician, Joy Harjo, For a Girl Becoming is… a beautiful experience waiting to be treasured by its lucky recipient, appropriate for celebrations of such joyous transitions as birth, graduation, or any other significant turning point in a young woman's life. — Midwest Book Review (Sun Tracks Series)
Gift Horse: A Lakota Story
Product Description: An action-packed coming-of-age story, Gift Horse is a wonderfully evocative introduction to 19th-century Native American life on the Great Plains. When his father gives him a gift horse, marking the beginning of his journey to manhood, Flying Cloud and the horse, Storm, spend their days hunting and roughhousing with the other boys and their horses. But when an enemy raiding party steals his beloved Storm, Flying Cloud faces the ultimate rite of passage.
Kinaaldá: A Navajo Girl Grows Up (We Are Still Here : Native Americans Today)
Celinda McKelvey looks like a typical 13-year-old American, and most of the time she lives like one, but her roots are deep in the Navajo nation, and she returns to the reservation to solemnize and celebrate her change from girl to woman. The ceremony, called Kinaaldá, marks the coming-of-age for a Navajo girl…Roessel's text describes Celinda's preparations and the ceremony itself and relates the ancient myth that gave rise to it. — Booklist (We Are Still Here: Native Americans Today)
Little Voice
Things have been hard for Ray, a young, green-eyed Ojibwe girl, since her father's accidental death. But when she spends the summer with grandmother, who is an elder and a healer, she finds her voice and begins her own process of healing. Set in northern Ontario in the late 1970s, this story from Ojibwe author Ruby Slipperjack speaks to a young girl's coming of age in a thoughtful, quiet way.
Meet Mindy: A Native Girl from the Southwest
Mindy is a Hopi and Tewa girl from the Southwest. Readers will journey with Mindy through her coming-of-age ceremony and will trace the history of the Hopi tribe. John Harrington's impressive photography brings to life the Arizona landscape and the beautiful katchina dolls carved by Mindy's father and grandfather. This insightful and instructive book offers a rare glimpse into the contemporary culture of the Hopi tribe, while celebrating Native American life. (My World: Young Native Americans Today)
My Indian Boyhood, New Edition
Although the traditional Sioux nation was in its last days when Luther Standing Bear was born in the 1860s, he was raised in the ancestral manner to be a successful hunter and warrior and a respectful and productive member of Sioux society. His life would be very different from that of his ancestors, but he was not denied the excitement of killing his first buffalo before leaving to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Owl in the Cedar Tree
Haske, a Navaho boy, is torn between the past of his people's rich, self-sustaining culture and a present that opens up new possibilities. His parents propel him in one direction, his grandfather in another, his teacher in still another. The boy has a secret wish, but its fulfillment seems beyond reach. At night he listens to the hoot of the owl in the cedar tree and wonders if good fortune or bad is in store. This beautifully written story finally supplies the answer.
Sees Behind Trees
Product Description: No matter how hard he tries, nearsighted Walnut just can't earn his adult name the way other boys do, by hitting a target with a bow and arrow. With his highly developed other senses, however, he shows he can "see what can't be seen" and earns a new name: Sees Behind Trees. But his special skill proves to be more important than he'd ever imagined when he is invited to go on a journey to a mysterious land, a journey filled with unforeseen challenges and dangers.
Sky
Georgia Salois, 11, lives with her grandparents in 1964 Montana, near a Blackfeet Reservation. After a spring of record rainfalls, a local dam bursts and a flood completely destroys the family's house and barn…While searching through the wreckage of their old homestead, Georgia discovers a foal that survived the flood, adopts her, and names her Sky. As the family struggles to put their lives back together, she learns that caring for the animal can be a form of healing, too. — School Library Journal
The Heart of a Chief
Chris's life is complicated. At school, he's been selected to lead a project on sports teams with Indian names. At home, where his father is battling alcoholism on the Penacook reservation, the Indians are divided about building a casino. It would destroy the beautiful island Chris thinks of as his own. What can one sixth-grade boy can do in the midst of so many challenges?
The Porcupine Year
The struggle to survive provides the exciting action in this sequel to The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence, which takes place in 1852…Omakayas, now 12, feels the anguish of displacement as her family, driven from its beloved Madeline Island by white settlers, endures violent raids in the freezing winter and comes close to starvation in its search for a home. — Booklist
The Whale Rider
Product Description: Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, is descended from a legendary "whale rider." In every generation since, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir, and the aging chief is desperate to find a successor. Kahu is his only great-grandchild — and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. But when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe, it is Kahu who saves the tribe when she reveals that she has the whale rider's ancient gift of communicating with whales.
Search Colorín Colorado
It's quite funny because when I finish reading a story, I always say, "Colorín, Colorado," and the children finish the saying for me, "Este cuento se ha acabado." Great work, please keep it up!
~ Higinio M.
