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Book Spotlight: Indian No More by Charlene Willing McManis with Traci Sorell

By Mike Hays on September 25, 2019 / Author Interviews, Book Lists, Fiction

Indian No More by Charlene Willing McManis & Traci Sorell is an exceptional and unique middle-grade historical fiction set in Oregon and Southern California in 1957-58. It’s an entertaining and realistic look at 10-year-old Regina Petit’s Umpqua Nation life on their Grand Ronde reservation in Oregon and their eventual termination.

After the Umpqua’s termination by the government, the story follows Regina’s extended family’s exodus from Grand Ronde to Los Angeles after the Umpqua termination to begin life, as her father says, as Americans. Regina experiences the trials and tribulations of trying to fit into her new Los Angeles neighborhood where nothing is familiar while navigating three big questions: Am I Indian? Am I American? Am I both?

Indian No More gives the reader an important glimpse into what it was like to be a member of a tribal nation targeted by the government for termination. Among other things, the termination policy ended the government’s recognition of tribal sovereignty, allowed the government to step away from their financial commitments from previous treaties, and established themselves as custodians over their land. Those native peoples affected, mainly against their will, were thrown into a mainstream society they really didn’t want to be thrown into and generally weren’t prepared to handle. For more background on U.S. Termination Policy, check out the wiki and the reference resources listed.

The switch from the relative comfort of the Umpqua Grand Ronde reservation to the discomforts at the house on 58th Place in LA is emotionally felt as one reads the book. Both places have similar fundamental issues of poverty and racism, but one is home and the other is completely foreign to Regina. Falling back on her own Umpqua experience and move to Los Angeles, Charlene Willing McManis masterfully takes us on a journey of family, friendships, and fitting in among an often cruel racial backdrop of late 1950s America.

Sadly, author Charlene Willing McManis passed away on May 1, 2018. She left the revision responsibility and the publication journey in the capable hands of her friend and talented author, Traci Sorell. To get an idea about who Charlene was as both a writer and a human, Traci agreed to answer a few questions about her and the process of directing Indian No More to publication.

Charlene Willing McManis

How and when did you first meet Charlene?

I first met Charlene at Kweli’s Color of Children’s Literature Conference in April 2016. All of the Native writers attending sat together at lunch and marveled to be at a kidlit conference where there were so many of us. That never happens! So we all said we’d be back again the following year.
Charlene and I became fast friends that day and stayed in touch after the conference. She got cancer after that and could not attend the 2017 Kweli conference, but she received treatment. I interviewed her for Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations blog when Charlene sold Indian No More to Tu Books that fall. All the Native writers cheered when they heard the news!

Traci Sorell

What was the process of taking over Indian No More after Charlene’s much-too-early passing in May of 2018?

In late January 2018, Charlene posted on Facebook that her cancer had come back and could not be cured. She did not have long to live. I sat there in shock for a few minutes. Then I immediately reached out to her. I cried the rest of the day, not wanting to accept that my joyful friend and her family had just received such devastating news.
In early March, Charlene emailed that her publisher, Stacy Whitman, asked if Charlene could recommend anyone to finish the revisions needed to get Indian No More published. Charlene wrote and said that she immediately thought of me and sent me the manuscript. While honored and humbled, I felt overwhelmed at the thought of revising a historical fiction middle grade novel in prose. I knew it was not autobiographical, but it was informed by her childhood and that of the experiences of her fellow tribal members. It seemed way out of my league. I had only written picture books and poetry to that point. And I’m from a completely different Native Nation with a different language, culture and history.
I quickly sent Charlene’s novel to my agent, Emily Mitchell, without reading it. As a former children’s book editor, I knew she could evaluate whether I would be able to pull it off. She responded that I could absolutely do this. I then read it and fell in love with the voice of the main character, Regina. I wanted to finish this book for my friend.

The responsibility of guiding this important story to publication must have been difficult. How did you manage and find the proper footing to continue Charlene’s vision of the book? Did you have any members of the Umpqua Nation.to turn to?

I’m not going to lie. Very difficult. Normally when you co-author a piece, there is someone there to ask questions to, throw ideas out with and take turns drafting or revising sections. I only had her written words. Thankfully, the voice of Regina captivated me as soon as I started reading. I felt like I could write in Regina’s voice. I understood each character’s back story enough that I was able to revise and not lose their essence on the page. But I needed a lot of help and I got it.

Lee & Low, the parent company of the Tu Books imprint, supported my trip to visit the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR) in early January of this year. This Native Nation is comprised of 29 tribes that were removed to the Grand Ronde reservation in northwest Oregon from their own tribal homelands. Charlene’s tribe, the Umpqua, are part of CTGR. The Cultural Resources Department staff, led by David Harrelson, were top notch. I had full access to their archives and museum including a new exhibit of their cultural items on loan from the British Museum. They helped me ensure we used the correct Chinuk Wawa words in the book, which Regina’s grandmother speaks and teaches her granddaughters. The book would lack so much without their input.

My husband and mother also helped me fact check all late 1950s pop culture and daily life references in the book. They also read it out loud for me so I could hear what the prose sounded like, which greatly helped my revision process.

The termination policies of the United States Government were damaging, to say the least. Many of the terminated Native Nations, against all odds, recovered and re-established themselves. What message do you think this perseverance of heritage speaks to future generations who may have to deal with these issues again?

Yes, it was devastating when Congress passed the termination resolution stating it would be their policy to cease having a government-to-government relationship with some Native Nations that they had signed treaties and entered into other legal agreements with to uphold. Through a series of statutes that followed, the federal government terminated one hundred and nine tribes. They sold off the land and resources of these tribes. It led to many tribal citizens being displaced because they could not afford to buy the land they lived on outright at the marked-up prices. That’s what the main character Regina, her family and the Grand Ronde tribe experience in the story.

The neighborhood at 58th Place is so full of life, positive and negative, good and bad, kind and mean-spirited. It felt so incredibly real to me as I read the book and I think many readers will be like me and be completely immersed in this setting. How did Charlene and you go about crafting this “feel”? (It’s masterfully done, by the way.)

That was really all Charlene. I certainly crafted some scenes that needed to be fleshed out more, but because she had grown up there, her descriptions of the place are spot on. Her husband sent me photos of her in that neighborhood, so I had those around me as I worked. I visited with him and found out her entire block of 58th Place had been torn down to build a large supermarket mall. But the rest of 58th Place still remained. The three-story red brick school building had been replaced, but I got a black and white photo of it from the Los Angeles School District. So I felt like I was there as I revised the story. This summer when I attended the SCBWI summer conference in Los Angeles, I went to Charlene’s old neighborhood and saw how close the houses are with their postage stamp yards, more concrete than grass, just as she describes.

The cover art is spectacular! Can you shed some light on the details of the cover art and design?

My editor, Elise McMullen-Ciotti, and the Tu Books publisher, Stacy Whitman, asked if I had any additional Native illustrators they could add to their established list. I gave them Marlena Myles’ name as she illustrated Thanku: Poems of Gratitude, a picture book poetry anthology, edited by Miranda Paul and published by Millbrook, in which I have a cinquain poem. I took a lot of photos when I visited Grand Ronde in Oregon from Spirit Mountain and the community plankhouse to their iconography in the art, museum and books I viewed there. I shared all of that with Marlena who is based in St. Paul, Minnesota, so she could take what she found useful to create the cover. Beyond that, she and the staff at Tu Books made the magic happen!

What do you think Charlene would say about the finished product and all the well-deserved accolades that Indian No More has garnered?

I assure you that Charlene would be smiling profusely as she always did. She would also thank so many people: her family for their support, her fellow Grand Ronde tribal citizens for sharing their termination and relocation experiences, all those who had helped hone her craft including her critique group, her mentor Margarita Engle, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Supriya Kelkar, those at Tu Books – Stacy Whitman, Elise McMullen-Ciotti – along with the rest of the Lee & Low staff, and the readers who have already said how much they enjoyed and learned from the book.
Charlene wanted to shine a light on a period of US history that is not taught in schools. Until now, there has not been a story for young people that shared what many Native Nations experienced at the same time as the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. This book is now part of her legacy and I am grateful for that.

Author Katherine Quimby wrote an exceptional memorial tribute following Charlene’s death on the Cynsations Blog.

Final Note

One of my greatest hopes for this book is that educators, librarians, and adults who work with kids, will carefully read the chapters in Indian No More about media representation and the Pilgrims & Indians “First” Thanksgiving pageant at Regina’s school. After reading, look at what we are still doing in 2019 at schools all across this nation to continue the harmful representation built into these false mythologies. It’s time to find a better and more accurate way to celebrate both Thanksgiving and the Native American Heritage Month in our classrooms.

As we plan for November and Native American Heritage Month, let’s not only bring more of these great Native & Indigenous works into our libraries, curriculums, and bookshelves but let’s expand this to a 365-day celebration, year after year after year. Because not only are books like Indian No More great examples of the work produced by Native authors, they’re just plain great books. So many stories from the past, present, and future are being produced by Native creators it’s a shame to confine the spotlight to only one month a year.

Native writers at Kweli in 2016 photo: First row: Charlene Willing McManis, Andrea Rogers, Marcie Rendon Back row: Natalie Dana, Laura Kaye Jagles, Traci Sorell, Joseph Bruchac, Kevin Noble Maillard

STEM Tuesday — Digging Up History/Archeology — Interview with Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan

By STEM Tuesday on September 24, 2019 / Archeology/Paleontology, Common Core & NGSS, STEM Tuesday

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Kerrie Logan Hollihan, author of MUMMIES EXPOSED! The highly-praised first installment in a new Creepy and True series published by Abrams. The book received starred reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist. Wow!

Mary Kay Carson: Tell us a bit about your new book.

Kerrie Logan Hollihan: Mummies Exposed! takes an in-depth look at human bodies that were preserved either with intent or by Mother Nature. (Some call the latter “serendipitous” mummies but “natural” is a friendlier term for my middle grade readers.) I tell their stories of discovery—and, thanks in part to STEM research—at least part of the stories of the dead themselves: ten children, women, and men across space and time, explaining why these people (like us) were mummified or how their bodies survived the process of decay.

MKC: Did your exhaustive research led to some interesting finds?

Kerrie: The best surprise I share with my readers is this: There is always something new to discover about something old! For instance, here I am writing about King Tutankhamun when along comes a New York Times story reporting that the blade in one of Tut’s daggers is composed of metal from a meteorite. That fresh fact would merit a quick revision before the book went to press. Stuff like that happened frequently during the more than three years I spent researching for various proposals and eventually writing the book. I like to say it nearly made a mummy out of me!

MKC: Do you choose to specifically write STEM books?

Kerrie: STEM writing found me in the course of thinking about something or someone I wanted to learn about. When I was in a master’s program in journalism at Northwestern University, I took a science writing class that led me to lots of interesting spots to learn—and ask questions about—astronomy, portland cement, nuclear physics, medications, and how to claw your way out of quicksand. I discovered then that I like to learn about the history of science. The key component to science writing, I learned, is to ask questions…lots of them…find answers, and then interpret these for the reader at a number of levels: general readership, science magazines, and best for me, young readers.

Kerrie Hollihan channels her inner sixth grader (who read Compton’s Encyclopedia for fun) to write award-winning nonfiction for young people. Kerrie belongs to the well-regarded nonfiction author group iNK Think Tank and its interactive partner, Authors on Call, and blogs at Hands on Books: Nonfiction for Kids with Fun Activities. Find Kerrie online at www.kerriehollihan.com.

MKC: What approach or angle did you take to writing this book?

Kerrie: In my heart, I’m still a sixth-grade girl who read the encyclopedia for fun. That’s who I target when I write for young people. As it turns out, older people can learn a few things from my books as well if they sit down and read my work. For Mummies Exposed!, I identified which mummies to include, according to availability of information, reliability of sources, and appropriateness for middle grade kids.

Some chapters were far tougher to write, because I had to explain (or gloss) key terms such as anthropology and archaeology, not to mention how they differ! There was quite a bit of science research to explain, as well—DNA and CT scans, aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, tuberculosis, and so on. It took well over a year to research and write the book. I worked chapter by chapter, researching each as I went along. I think you’d say Mummies Exposed! is mostly narrative nonfiction, but I also included bits that are expository, too.

MKC: What are you working on now?

Kerrie: I’m wrapping up final edits in my next book for Abrams Books for Young Readers, Ghosts Aghast! It’s more STEAM than STEM. After we started work on Mummies Exposed!, Abrams suggested a series to me: “Creepy and True.” Abrams suggested the ghost title, to be followed by a third book (which I’d proposed initially) which we are calling Bones! Think King Richard III buried in a parking lot in England, and a young woman who was cannibalized—posthumously—in the Jamestown Colony. Lots of intriguing STEM info to locate, read, and explain to my readers.

Win a FREE copy of Mummies Exposed!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host is Mary Kay Carson, author of The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, Weird Animals, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

Nostalgia and Those Childhood Favorites: Which books are we just sentimental about, and which books stand the test of time?

By Meira Drazin on September 23, 2019 / Articles

Fresh or Frozen?

For many of us of a certain age, there comes a time where we want to impart to our children, or children we know, the culture that we got at their age that essentially made us “us.” What I mean is, when our child is nine, we really want them to love the books that we loved when we were nine. That we read over and over again. That we can instantly recall incidents and episodes from; as well as the smell of the couch we would lie on when we read it; the ache of our hearts and taste of our tears from the sorrow of a character dying, experiencing cruelty or even just going through heartbreak. The same goes for movies. Cue me excitedly putting on Grease for my then-nine-year-old daughter in the hospital room TV as she waited to be wheeled down to surgery for her tonsils to be taken out. Wow, bad idea on so many levels. She didn’t enjoy it, not just because she was a nervous wreck about the impending surgery, but also because she didn’t get it. The movie went right over her head—thankfully. (I was mortified to be watching it with her. And felt like the worst parent!) And let’s just say the film has not aged well in terms of values, in terms of feminism, in terms of #metoo, in terms of America as a white world, in terms of anything frankly. But happily, for the most part, many of the books I loved as a child I have been able to read to my children with more confidence in my parenting skills—and with the added bonus that my kids loved these books too.

What is the Common Denominator?

Jonathan Rosen spoke here on the MUF blog about his nostalgia for the books he read as a child which have inspired the spooky books he writes today. And Marjorie Ingall, who reviews children’s books for the New York Times and is a culture columnist at Tablet Magazine, while on the faculty of the TENT writing residency mentioned The Carp in the Bathtub “as a book that holds up for today’s kids and isn’t purely a nostalgia exercise for adults.” I started thinking about this idea of nostalgia when I was planning a tribute to Judith Kerr and the relevancy of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.

A nostalgic-feeling cover of the All-of-a-Kind Family series from 2014

What other middle grade books from my own childhood stand the test of time—both for me and for my own kids? Is there a common denominator? When I first started writing my middle grade novel HONEY AND ME, my eldest daughter was at an age where I had begun to read to her some of my favorites as a child— Ballet Shoes, Anne of Green Gables, tons of Judy Blume, all the Ramona books, and All-of-a-Kind Family. My daughter is now fourteen, but I have been reading these to my sons too—currently ages eight-and-a-half and nearly eleven—and they’ve also loved them. One of the things I think connects these books is writers who deeply understand the magnitude of the smaller dramas of every day life, and are interested in the details of them. (What I particularly loved about the All-of-a-Kind Family books was that they did this about being Jewish, in a way that was both integral and incidental.) I very much try to bring this sensibility to my own writing.

If Not Now When?

Beverly Clearly’s Ramona books (the first one is from 1955), all the Judy Blume books, but especially the Fudge series (first one is from the 1970s) and All-of-a-Kind Family (first one is from 1951) all particularly still feel fresh and relevant. But I do wonder: could these books be published today?

I clearly like the old-fashioned—or lets say the character-driven and safe-feeling. But in my own writing I constantly feel like I come up against (probably rightly) what works for today’s audience. It would seem that with all the above books all still in print, the market generally does keep the books worth keeping. However at the same time, the fashions have changed so when it comes to what is being published today even when something has an old-fashioned feel to it, it’s still done in a modern way. I’m thinking for example of The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser—it’s reminiscent of Elizabeth Enright’s beloved The Saturdays, but when I tried the episodic The Saturdays with my then-eight and ten-year-old sons they were bored—whereas The Vanderbeekers has a modern-feeling plot structure and they were immediately sucked in. (Just to say also, I think of my sons’ reading tastes as a litmus test—if they don’t like something it’s not necessarily conclusive, but when they do like something, especially novels that you wouldn’t automatically think to hand to tween boys, it is telling about the strength of that particular book.)

A range of eras in these covers from my personal evergreen library

…. Then again, just because something has gone out of print doesn’t mean that is deserved. I recently tracked down two 1980s favorites to read to my kids: This Can’t be Happening at MacDonald Hall by Gordon Korman, about the antics of a duo called Bruno and Boots at their boarding school—which was still hands-down hilarious to both my sons and me; and Here She is Ms. Teeny Wonderful by Martyn Godfrey about a girl who likes to jump BMX bikes and to her utter dismay becomes a finalist in a national beauty pageant. I haven’t read this last one to my sons yet, it’s next on the list (we’re currently on Rita Garcia Williams’ One Crazy Summer: historical fiction and over their heads that they’re still enjoying)—but when I read it again myself I was delighted to see that notwithstanding the cover, it was still funny, fast-paced and feminist. I should also mention that the Bruno and Boots books (there were several sequels) I was able to find were a 35th anniversary edition, reissued by Scholastic in 2013, and the Kindle editions are still available for purchase.

Some things never change

So perhaps this is all to say: a well-constructed book with sympathetic characters, emotions you can relate to and dramas you feel invested in no matter how similar or foreign they might be to your own life, will always have the power to suck a young reader in so the pages keep turning. And long after they have turned the last page and closed the book, or perhaps even started the whole thing again from the beginning, —the story, the experience of reading it, and the memories of that experience—will become baked into their very being. And one day, many years later, they will wish to impart this multi-faceted cultural experience on to the important young people in their own lives. Just as we did to them.

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