Shopping etc.
Nov. 19th, 2012 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerA splendid day! We went shopping, and I got a spiffy red jacket - we had lunch at the Greek place, and I attempted to suss out the secret to their amazing lentil soup, but alas, it remains a little beyond me. (I do have an slightly-less-amazing-but-still-very-tasty lentil soup recipe, though. I should post it when I'm back at school and have access to the recipe.)
And then we went to Whole Foods and I ate all the things. They had some amazing gingerbread samples out, so I got two of my friends gingerbread for Christmas. Food for Christmas, it's a thing, right?
***
I also finished reading the Kaya books. I first tried to read the Kaya books when I was fourteen or fifteen, when they first came out. I didn’t make it very far, being too old for the writing style and too young to overcome it through indulgent nostalgia; and anyway, the first Kaya book is not very good. It's more a series of vignettes than one connected story.
The second book, though, the second book! The story really takes off in the second book. Kaya and Speaking Rain, her blind adoptive sister, get kidnapped by another tribe during a raid! Kaya escapes, but she has to leave Speaking Rain behind! And also her horse! But in a later book, she finds Speaking Rain again! But Speaking Rain had escaped, nearly perished, been found by a Salish woman who saved her life, and therefore pledged to remain with the Salish woman forevermore! So Kaya has found her sister, only to lose her again!!!!!!!!!
You can already see me eating this up with a spoon.
(And don't worry, they figure out a way that Speaking Rain can keep her vow - everyone takes this vow totally seriously, even though Speaking Rain is like eight - and also spend some time with Kaya and her tribe. They also find the horse. And Kaya inherits a name. Oh, and she gets a puppy!)
So, yeah. The Kaya books? Loads of fun. For all that the author is not Nez Perce - given that American Girl carefully got an African American author for the Addy books and a Jewish author for the Rebecca books, I don't know why they didn't do that here - American Girl did get the Nez Perce tribe involved in the process of putting these books together, and the author clearly did loads of research, so they are at least a good jumping off point.
I can't recall that I've read any books about Native Americans pre-contact with white settlers before (Do such children's books not exist? Did I just not look for them as a child? Either is possible), so they're interesting for that reason too: it's a very different past than most of the other historical fiction books explore. Both the Dear America books with Native American protags were post-contact, I think, and one was actually in a boarding school...
OH. Speaking of Dear America. The series was so popular that there are apparently related series all across the Anglophone world - Dear Canada, My Story (for the UK), My Australian Story...
I'm so curious about these! If only I'd known, I could have picked some up when I was in Britain for study abroad, or in Australia when I was 17. There's a blitzkrieg story! And a suffragette's story! And a Spanish lady-in-waiting of Catherine of Aragon story! Also inexplicably a Roman girl in ancient Pompeii (either she gets away before the volcano blows, or most depressing diary ever).
But. I have my American Girl project. I am not going to be swayed from my purpose by books that aren't even available to me anyway!
And then we went to Whole Foods and I ate all the things. They had some amazing gingerbread samples out, so I got two of my friends gingerbread for Christmas. Food for Christmas, it's a thing, right?
***
I also finished reading the Kaya books. I first tried to read the Kaya books when I was fourteen or fifteen, when they first came out. I didn’t make it very far, being too old for the writing style and too young to overcome it through indulgent nostalgia; and anyway, the first Kaya book is not very good. It's more a series of vignettes than one connected story.
The second book, though, the second book! The story really takes off in the second book. Kaya and Speaking Rain, her blind adoptive sister, get kidnapped by another tribe during a raid! Kaya escapes, but she has to leave Speaking Rain behind! And also her horse! But in a later book, she finds Speaking Rain again! But Speaking Rain had escaped, nearly perished, been found by a Salish woman who saved her life, and therefore pledged to remain with the Salish woman forevermore! So Kaya has found her sister, only to lose her again!!!!!!!!!
You can already see me eating this up with a spoon.
(And don't worry, they figure out a way that Speaking Rain can keep her vow - everyone takes this vow totally seriously, even though Speaking Rain is like eight - and also spend some time with Kaya and her tribe. They also find the horse. And Kaya inherits a name. Oh, and she gets a puppy!)
So, yeah. The Kaya books? Loads of fun. For all that the author is not Nez Perce - given that American Girl carefully got an African American author for the Addy books and a Jewish author for the Rebecca books, I don't know why they didn't do that here - American Girl did get the Nez Perce tribe involved in the process of putting these books together, and the author clearly did loads of research, so they are at least a good jumping off point.
I can't recall that I've read any books about Native Americans pre-contact with white settlers before (Do such children's books not exist? Did I just not look for them as a child? Either is possible), so they're interesting for that reason too: it's a very different past than most of the other historical fiction books explore. Both the Dear America books with Native American protags were post-contact, I think, and one was actually in a boarding school...
OH. Speaking of Dear America. The series was so popular that there are apparently related series all across the Anglophone world - Dear Canada, My Story (for the UK), My Australian Story...
I'm so curious about these! If only I'd known, I could have picked some up when I was in Britain for study abroad, or in Australia when I was 17. There's a blitzkrieg story! And a suffragette's story! And a Spanish lady-in-waiting of Catherine of Aragon story! Also inexplicably a Roman girl in ancient Pompeii (either she gets away before the volcano blows, or most depressing diary ever).
But. I have my American Girl project. I am not going to be swayed from my purpose by books that aren't even available to me anyway!
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 03:42 am (UTC)I think my favorite of them was the one about Elizabeth I (although I also really liked the one about Kaiulani) - I read Elizabeth's story so many times that I still sometimes have to unpick what was in the novel from actual Tudor history.
I suspect that the country-specific books don't cross borders that much. Probably it doesn't occur to the publishers that American children might want to read Australian history novels, or vice versa.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 04:16 am (UTC)They do exist, although all the ones I recall reading as a kid were by white authors and probably questionable. I gather there's some, hmmm, wariness about historical fiction about Native Americans, due to disturbingly widespread belief among non-Native people that a) Native Americans *are* history and b) a desire to raise awareness of Native Americans now as part of living cultures.
I was going to suggest poking around Oyate to see if they have any recommendations, but their website seems to have vanished.
Debbie Reese (http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/), iirc, mostly talks about bad examples, but there may be something somewhere in her blog.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 02:14 pm (UTC)That explains why all the history notes at the end of the Kaya books end with "AND BY THE WAY THE NEZ PERCE STILL EXIST. JUST FYI."
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 08:25 pm (UTC)Hahaha--yes.
That's interesting that they got a black writer to write Addy and a Jewish writer to write Rebecca. And very good question about stories about pre-contact Native Americans! As usual, it's the old "focus on the white people" trope. Props to Kaya's stories for getting away from that.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 10:41 pm (UTC)(Hey I just noticed that Kayamanira's nickname = same as Kaya. Huh! Unintentional. Originally I was going with something that could be reduced to Kay, but changed my mind.)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-21 03:18 am (UTC)I did not know about the other Dear... series. I'm going to have to try to find a few because how can you NOT?
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Date: 2012-11-21 03:22 am (UTC)Oh well, no use dwelling on it!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-27 01:34 am (UTC)Not that I am rereading your whole AG tag. Or anything. Coooough.
But honestly, even though it makes me feel a shambles and po not to buy people more expensive, lasting shit for Christmas, I find they seem to actually like The Gift Of Some Food What I Made Or Bought waaaay better. English people who hadn't had it before still talk about the bags of peppermint bark I made them last year/jars of mincemeat or chutney or DIY taco seasoning (THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE LIKE, NEVER HAD A TACO, IT IS UNFATHOMABLY SAD) with enthusiasm they never show for the crap I managed to buy them.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-27 02:34 am (UTC)