American Indian Youth Today
These novels and short stories by and about American Indians give voice to contemporary Native youth who are finding their way through a complex and often challenging world. The experiences range from accounts of life on and off of the reservation to contemporary issues for young adults, such as the question of American Indian mascots.
Other Resources
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#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women
Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change.
Apple in the Middle
Apple Starkington turned her back on her Native American heritage the moment she was called a racial slur. After her wealthy father gives her the boot one summer, Apple reluctantly agrees to visit her Native American relatives on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in northern North Dakota for the first time. Apple learns to deal with the culture shock of Indian customs and the Native Michif language, while she tries to find a connection to her dead mother.
Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me
Product Description: Moana Kawelo, PhD, has a promising career as a museum curator in Los Angeles. The untimely death of her father and the gravitational pull of Hawaii when she returns home for his funeral causes Moana to question her motivations and her glamorous life in California. Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me is the story of Moana's struggle to understand her ancestral responsibilities, mend relationships, and find her identity as a Hawaiian in today s world. 2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award Winner.
Blue Raven
A stolen bicycle brings together two friends. Brody shows Trevor how Aboriginal traditions and values can help him have respect and appreciation for what he has. This title is part of Pearson Canada's Well-Aware series focused on mental health.
Crazy Horse's Girlfriend
"There's no horror flick or disaster movie scarier than a teenager's life. Erika T. Wurth writes about a young woman's longing with such heart and soul, it made me want to cry. Here she chronicles the poor with compassion and respect, and depicts their moments of joy with the only language worthy of such heights—poetry."—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
Hearts Unbroken
When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town.
High Elk's Treasure
Google Books: Caught in a raging storm, Joe High Elk and his sister, Marie, seek shelter in the cave of their ancestor, Steps High Like an Elk, where they learn their family history and discover High Elk's hundred-year-old forbidden treasure.
Activity Guide available.
I Can Make This Promise
All her life, Edie has known that her mom was adopted by a white couple. So, no matter how curious she might be about her Native American heritage, Edie is sure her family doesn’t have any answers. Until the day when she and her friends discover a box hidden in the attic — a box full of letters signed “Love, Edith,” and photos of a woman who looks just like her. Suddenly, Edie has a flurry of new questions about this woman who shares her name. Could she belong to the Native family that Edie never knew about?
If I Ever Get Out of Here
Product Description: Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him — people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George.
Lightning Rider (Lorimer SideStreets)
Product Description: When January Fournier arrives at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, her brother Grey is barely clinging to life in intensive care after a horrible motorcycle crash. She's devastated — but things get worse when the police accuse Grey of a string of bike thefts, claims he's in no condition to dispute. Jan decides she's the only person who can uncover the truth and sets out to find the real thief.
Little Brother of War (Pathfinders)
Product Description: Sixteen-year-old Mississippi Choctaw Randy Cheska has lived most of his young life in the shadow of his older football-hero brother, Jack. After Jack is killed while serving in Iraq, Randy's father puts even more pressure on Randy to excel in football. But Randy has no interest in sports and has never been good at them. Imagine Randy's surprise when he discovers stickball, a game he's immediately drawn to.
Love Beyond Body, Space, Time
Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time is a collection of indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman undergoing an experimental transition process to young lovers separated through decades and meeting in their own far future. These are stories of machines and magic, love and self-love.
Moccasin Thunder: American Indian Stories for Today
Product Description: The ten stories that make up this collection edited by Lori Carlson (Cool Salsa) are raw, original, and fresh. A supermarket checkout line, a rowboat on a freezing lake at dawn, a drunken dance in the gym, an ice hockey game on public-access TV. These are some of the backgrounds against which ten outstanding authors such as Sherman Alexie, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Linda Hogan, and Lee Francis have created their memorable characters.
On The Move (On The Move Series)
What will Callum and his teenage Southern California skate buddies do when a major war breaks out one summer while they are away at camp? How will they find their families? Who is actually sending them messages that guide them through the maze of underground skateparks towards safe haven in the north? And will they really be safe when they get to their friend friend's reservation in Washington state? This dystopian novel for teen readers is the first in a new series.
Pathfinders #1: No Name
Product Description: Inspired by the traditional Choctaw story "No Name," this modern adaptation features a present-day Choctaw teenager surviving tough family times — his mother left home and he is living with a mean-spirited, abusive father. The one place the teen can find peace is on the neighborhood basketball court. But after a violent confrontation with his father, the teen runs away, only to return home to find an unexpected hiding spot in his own backyard.
Pathfinders #2: No More No Name
Bobby Byington has always had to navigate his father’s alcoholism and anger, but things are looking up. His father has stopped drinking, his mother is back home, and his basketball team is winning games. But two new problems surface when his "smart" girlfriend is bullied by a resentful schoolmate and a fellow team member is bullied by an abusive father. Book 2 of the Pathfinders series.
Pathfinders #3: A Name Earned
After overcoming years of trouble with his alcoholic father and surviving a near-death car accident, Bobby Byington ― for the first time in his life ― has a strong family. His parents are reunited, his father has turned away from the bottle, and Bobby is a starter on the high school basketball team. But the door to trouble never stays closed. Bobby's girlfriend, Faye, is suffering attacks from a school bully, and some of Bobby's basketball teammates are dealing with all-too-familiar problems at home.
Rain Is Not My Indian Name
Product Description: Cassidy Rain Berghoff didn't know that the very night she decided to get a life would be the night that her best friend would lose his. It's been six months since her best friend died, and up until now Rain has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around her aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again — at least through the lens of her camera.
Skeleton Man
Ever since the morning Molly woke up to find that her parents had vanished, her life has become filled with terrible questions. Where have her parents gone? Who is this spooky old man who's taken her to live with him, claiming to be her great-uncle? Why does he never eat, and why does he lock her in her room at night? What are her dreams of the Skeleton Man trying to tell her? There's one thing Molly does know: she needs to find some answers before it's too late.
Solar Storms
Product Description: Searching for her birth mother, 17-year-old Angela finds her way to the remote region of the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnesota. Here she reunites with the woman who raised her during her early years. But her happiness is short-lived, when she gets involved in a conflict with developers preparing to build a huge hydroelectric dam.
Son Who Returns (PathFinders)
Super Indian: Volume 1
Hubert Logan was an ordinary Reservation boy until he ate tainted commodity cheese infused with Rezium, a secret government food enrichment additive. Known as Super Indian, Hubert fights evil forces who would overtake the Reservation's resources and population. Assisted by his trusty sidekicks Mega Bear and Diogi, they fight crime the way they know how — with strength, smarts, and humor.
Ten Little Indians
Product Description: With Ten Little Indians, Alexie offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and who they love.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Junior is a basketball-playing, cartoon-drawing teenager living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. When he decides that it's time to start working towards a better future for himself, he leaves his school on the reservation for an all-white high school where he finds that the only other Indian there is the school mascot. With a sense of humor and a strong spirit, Junior remains determined to persevere in the face of tragedy and a complicated exploration of his own identity. Cartoon drawings accompany the text.
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 Lesser Blessed: A Novel
Product Description: The Lesser Blessed is a powerful coming-of-age story — edgy, stark, and at times, darkly funny that centers around Larry, a Native teenager trying to cope with a painful past and find his place in a confusing and stressful modern world. Skinny as spaghetti, nervy, and self-deprecating, the 16-year-old is an appealing mixture of bravado and vulnerability.
The Round House
Product Description: One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
The Window
Product Description: In this YA prequel to his adult novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris introduces readers to 11-year-old Rayona Taylor — part black, part Indian — and shows the events that shaped this unforgettable young woman. After being placed in foster care, Rayona goes to live with her Kentucky relatives, in this novel about betrayal, forgiveness, and the unbreakable bonds of family.
Three Feathers: A Graphic Novel
Three young men -- Flinch, Bryce, and Rupert -- have vandalized their community. They are sent by its Elders to live nine months on the land as part of the circle sentencing process. There, the young men learn to take responsibility for their actions and acquire the humility required to return home. But will they be forgiven for what they have done? Three Feathers explores the power and grace of restorative justice in on Northern community and the cultural legacy that can empower furture generations.
Thunder on the Plains (PathFinders)
It's been two years and middle-school student Danny Wind is still not over his father's death. When his mom marries a white man and they move to a new "white bread" neighborhood, Danny's life changes. The school principal considers him a troublemaker and soon his mom decides to send him to a summer survival camp for Native American teens. Danny is sure he is in for a boring summer on the reservation — until he meets other Native kids, learns to ride and care for horses, develops a relationship with his grandfather, and soon finds himself rescuing bison in Yellowstone National Park.
Tribal Journey (PathFinders)
Jason's lucky to be alive, but life in a wheelchair was not in his plans. Even when he was protecting his mom and siblings from his drunken father or escaping from home to be with his friends, he never imagined this future. When he becomes part of the Raven Canoe Family and learns to "pull" a canoe, however, his outlook on life begins to change. After completing a two-week tribal canoe journey with his Duwamish tribal members, Jason is proud to be a Coast Salish Indian.
Urban Tribes: Native Americans in the City
The majority of Natives in North America live "off the rez." How do they stay rooted to their culture? How do they connect with their community? Urban Tribes offers unique insight into this growing and often misperceived group. This anthology profiles young urban Natives and how they connect with Native culture and values in their contemporary lives.
When Thunders Spoke
Product Description: Norman Two Bull is a modern and savvy fifteen-year-old Sioux who lives on a Dakota reservation with his parents. He is impatient with, if not faintly contemptuous of, the "old ways." Encouraged by his grandfather, Norman makes a perilous climb to the top of a sacred butte, searching for agates where Indian boys had once gone for spirit visions. There, unexpectedly, he finds an ancient relic with the power to make strange things happen — and they do! When Thunders Spoke is a haunting story whose strength often lies in what is not said.
Who Will Tell My Brother?
Product Description: Determined to sway high school officials to remove disparaging Indian mascots, Evan assumes a struggle that spirals him onto a soul-searching journey and exposes him to a barrage of bullying and escalating violence. Marlene Carvell's free-verse novel is a timely look at a true story of a mixed-race teen caught up in an exploration of his past, his culture, and his identity.
Wild Ride (Lorimer SideStreets)
Product Description: In this sequel to Lightning Rider, January and her family have taken in an RCMP summer student as a boarder. When Willow Whitecloud pulls up on her Kawasaki ZX-10R, January takes an instant liking to her. Willow becomes both a friend and a spiritual guide, who helps January connect with her Native heritage. But January is shocked when a number of clues suggest that her mentor may be involved in illegal activity that threatens the natural world she has taught January to respect.
Multicultural Literature
See more great related resources and videos in our Multicultural Literature section!