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The first book of its kind, Self-Determined Stories: The Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature reads Indigenous-authored YA—from school stories to speculative fiction— not only as a vital challenge to stereotypes but also as a rich intellectual resource for theorizing Indigenous sovereignty in the contemporary era. Building on scholarship from Indigenous studies, children’s literature, and cultural studies, Suhr-Sytsma delves deep in close readings of works by Sherman Alexie, Jeannette Armstrong, Joseph Bruchac, Drew Hayden Taylor, Susan Power, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel. Together, Suhr-Sytsma contends, these works constitute a unique Indigenous YA genre. This genre radically revises typical YA conventions while offering a fresh portrayal of Indigenous self-determination and a fresh critique of multiculturalism, heteropatriarchy, and hybridity. This literature, moreover, imagines compelling alternative ways to navigate cultural dynamism, intersectionality, and alliance-formation. Self-Determined Stories invites readers from a range of contexts to engage with Indigenous YA and convincingly demonstrates the centrality of Indigenous stories, Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous people to the flourishing of everyone in every place.
 

Here’s a great book for every young adult age 11 up, Signing Fun: American Sign Language Vocabulary, Phrases, Games, and Activities. Signing is visual, easy to learn, and fun to use. Author Penny Warner offers 441 useful signs on a variety of favorite topics: activities, animals, fashion, food, holidays, home, outdoors, parties, people, places, play, emotions, school, shopping, travel, plus extra fun signs for especially popular words. Each chapter includes practice sentences using everyday phrases to help new signers learn in a fun way.

Signing Fun provides dozens of entertaining games and activities, too, such as Alphabet Sign, Finger Fun Gesture Guess, Match Signs, Mime and Sign, Oppo-Sign, Picture Hand, Secret Sign, Sign-A-Gories, Signo Bingo, Snap and Sign, and Truth or Sign. It also features a list of tips on how to sign, including how to fingerspell, use numbers, and communicate with deaf people. Whimsical drawings clearly illustrate all of the signs, and a full index lists all of their English meanings for quick reference. Signing Fun is a terrific first book for learning sign while having a great time.

Rendered in lovely, full-color illustrations, Silent Observer traces the early life of author Christy MacKinnon in Nova Scotia at the turn of the century. Born in 1889, the author lost her hearing from “the Winter fever” at the age of two. Her story tells of a simple, charming life on her family’s farm by the bay and in the schoolhouse where her father taught her in their hometown of Boisdale.

Silent Observer is an affectionate, poignant memoir of childhood as seen through the eyes of a vivacious young girl. Teachers, parents, and children will share in their enjoyment of this beautiful, sensitive story of a harder but wonderful time that has passed.

World War II soldier Bill Wynne met Smoky while serving in New Guinea, where the dog, who was smaller than Wynne’s army boot, was found trying to scratch her way out of a foxhole. After he adopted her, she served as the squadron mascot and is credited as being the first therapy dog for the emotional support she provided the soldiers. When they weren’t fighting, Bill taught Smoky hundreds of tricks to entertain the troops. Smoky became a war hero herself at an airstrip in Luzon, the Philippines, where she helped save forty airplanes and hundreds of soldiers from imminent attack.

After the war, Bill worked as a Hollywood animal trainer and then returned to his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He and Smoky continued to perform their act, even getting their own TV show, How to Train Your Dog with Bill Wynne and Smoky.

Nancy Roe Pimm presents Bill and Smoky’s story to middle-grade readers in delightful prose coupled with rich archival illustrations. Children will love learning about World War II from an unusual perspective, witnessing the power of the bond between a soldier and his dog, and seeing how that bond continued through the exciting years following the war.

This Badger Bio shares the story of author Sterling North – his adventures and misadventures as a young boy growing up in Edgerton, Wisconsin. Young readers will learn how North’s early experience in Wisconsin influenced him in writing some of his best loved children’s books – such as Rascal and So Dear To My Heart.

The story gives readers a glimpse of early 20th century customs and lifestyles in the rural Midwest. It also includes global issues of the time, including World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic, which greatly affected Sterling’s boyhood. As examples, his admired older brother Hershel served overseas in WWI as Sterling was growing up, bringing world events to the North family’s doorstep. His mother Gladys died when Sterling was only 7 years old because of the lack of medical advances in the early 1900s. And, as a young man, Sterling was hit by polio, a common epidemic scourge that left many children with paralysis.

Readers will learn of Sterling North’s successes, not only as a beloved author of children’s books, but as a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, an editor of North Star children’s history books, and a well-respected critic of other children’s literature.