Her family lives on an island in Lake Superior, and later on the Great Plains during the mid- to late 1800s. The Birchbark books chronicle the life and seasonal experiences of an Ojibwe family, starting from the perspective of a 7-year-old girl named Omakayas.

But I decided to read it to Seeger anyway, and we were both quickly captivated by the story. When I asked if she thought it would be a good read-aloud for my 3rd grader, she cringed, and said, “Isn’t that the book that deals with smallpox?” It was clear she thought this topic too serious for a child my son’s age. One friend, another teacher and parent, had read the first book years ago.

Even though I know many people who are familiar with Erdrich’s poetry and novels for adults - especially her National Book Award winner, The Round House - I could find only a few teacher-librarian colleagues who knew about the Birchbark series for children. I asked around before I started reading to see if any friends had read this series with their children. Over the past 15 years Erdrich has published four more books for the series, including two Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners: The Game of Silence and Chickadee. It was published in 1999 and was a National Book Award finalist for young people’s fiction that year. The Birchbark House is the first book in a series that Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa (a band of the Anishinaabe also known as Ojibwe), wrote about her own family’s experience of being forced from their ancestral home. I had also read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories to Seeger, and really wanted to prompt conversation about and counteract the racist perspective we had encountered in that famous - and infamous - narrative of westward expansion. White, and Lewis Carroll, because those were books I loved as a child. We had been reading mostly older books by white, male authors like A. My selection of her book that day was also part of a concerted effort to diversify the novels I was choosing to read to Seeger each night. I was familiar with some of her adult novels from my college years and remembered appreciating Erdrich’s writing and perspective, so I wondered what stories she offered to children. I first spotted this book on the shelves in the children’s section a few years before, and I was thrilled to see Erdrich’s name on the spine of a “chapter book” for middle-grade readers. When my son Seeger was 8 years old, I brought home Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House from the library to read to him.

The birchbark