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Jones, Dan SuSuWeh

Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools

304 pp. | Scholastic/Focus | September, 2024 | Trade ISBN 9781338889475 $19.99 | Paper ISBN 9781546145332 $9.99 | Ebook ISBN 9781338889499 $12.99
(2) 4-6 Jones straightforwardly chronicles the story of his family's (members of the Ponca Nation) experience in the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, one of many residential boarding schools established in the nineteenth century by the U.S. and Canadian governments to strip Indigenous children of their culture. In 1885, when she was four years old, Jones's grandmother Elizabeth (her Ponca name translates to Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight) is forcibly taken from her home and brought to the White Eagle School; a year later school officials transfer Elizabeth to another school, Chilocco, without her family's knowledge. After graduating, Elizabeth works as a matron at the school; the author provides a poignant account of the changes her family observes in her when she finally returns home. Her daughter and granddaughter attend Chilocco -- by choice, unlike Elizabeth -- and although the author does not attend Chilocco as a student, he does maintenance work at the school before it closes in 1980. Jones deftly mixes his family history with larger Indigenous history. The varied perspectives through the years add nuance, while the book acknowledges the atrocities of the American Indian boarding schools throughout. Middle-grade and middle-school readers will gain a deeper insight into Indigenous history through this family account. An extensive bibliography is appended.
Reviewer: Nicholl Denice Montgomery | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2024

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