Native American Classics

April 1, 2013
The latest edition of the Graphic Classics series focuses on Native American stories and poems, mostly from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, adapted by a number of writers and illustrators with Native American ancestry. The chapters range from folktales highlighting the indigenous American peoples’ symbiotic coexistence with nature and animals to dour stories of culture clashes (and worse) with European settlers and frontiersmen. Standouts include a Jack London–esque saga of a young wolf stranded away from his pack, the story of an assimilated young Sioux and the friction between him and his tribe, and an amusing cartoon about the intestinal dangers of eating too many “special potatoes”. While the book as a whole has elegiac moments, it is mostly a celebration of a distinguished extant culture, and these skillfully adapted stories resonate just as powerfully as when they were first told.

March 1, 2013
Grades 7-12 The Graphic Classics series has cast a wide net lately, branching out from illustrated adaptations of short stories by the likes of Poe and Lovecraft to surveys of tales centering on African Americans and, now, Native Americans. Collecting stories by Native American writers from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, this is a fine plunge into a culture that's been shamefully underrepresented in the format, infrequent exceptions like the anthology Trickster (2010) and George O'Connor's Journey into Mohawk Country (2006) notwithstanding. Not surprisingly, many of the poems and stories focus on the tense relationship with the White Man and the fading of the Native American way of life, and a tone of melancholy pervades much of the book. Toward the middle, though, humorous stories pop up, including an encounter between a coyote god and a wild potato, and hope also springs up, as in the poem Changing Is Not Vanished. Much care has been taken to match the appropriate art style to each adaptation, and though no big names supply illustrations, each storyfrom the tragic to the funnyslips gracefully into its visuals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)