The author’s softly hewn pencil drawings infuse life and authenticity to her poetic, exquisitely wrought narrative. Erdrich–a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwa–spoke to Ojibwa elders about the spirit and significance of Madeline Island, read letters from travelers, and even spent time with her own children on the island, observing their reactions to woods, stones, crayfish, bear, and deer.

Readers will be riveted by the daily life of this Native American family, in which tanning moose hides, picking berries, and scaring crows from the cornfield are as commonplace as encounters with bear cubs and fireside ghost stories. We follow Omakayas and her adopted family through a cycle of four seasons in 1847, including the winter, when a historically documented outbreak of smallpox overtook the island. The sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic on Spirit Island, Omakayas, then only a baby girl, was rescued by a fearless woman named Tallow and welcomed into an Ojibwa family on Lake Superior’s Madeline Island, the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. With The Birchbark House, award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s first novel for young readers, this same slice of history is seen through the eyes of the spirited, 7-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas, or Little Frog, so named because her first step was a hop. The beloved and essential Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich includes The Birchbark House, The Game of Silence, The Porcupine Year, Chickadee, and Makoons.Nineteenth-century American pioneer life was introduced to thousands of young readers by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books. 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.

The birchbark