Miranda's Last Stand - Softcover

Whelan, Gloria

3.62

29 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064420973 ISBN 13: 9780064420976

Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books, 2000

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After the Sioux killed her Papa at the Battle of Little Bighorn, eleven-year-old Miranda struggles with her mama's prejudice and her own experiences with Indians in the Wild West Show. Reprint.

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About the Author:

Gloria Whelan, whose novel Homeless Bird won the National Book Award, is a critically acclaimed writer of poetry, short stories, and novels for children and young adults. Homeless Bird tells the story of a courageous thirteen-year-old heroine who struggles to make a future for herself in modern-day India. Mrs. Whelan often uses as a setting the very woods in northern Michigan in which she lives with her husband, Joseph, as well as the beautiful Mackinac Island. She is the author of The Indian School, Miranda's Last Stand, and the beloved Island Trilogy: Once on This Island (winner of the Great Lakes Book Award), Farewell to the Island, and Return to the Island. Her lastest novel, Angel on the Square, is a sweeping historical saga set at the brink of the Russian Revolution.

From Publishers Weekly:

Returning to territory she explored in The Indian School, Whelan explores the tensions between settlers and Native Americans in this uneven tale, narrated by a girl who becomes involved with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. In 1876, when Miranda was two, her father fought with Custer in the Seventh Cavalry and was killed at the battle of Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull and his warriors. Eight years later, Miranda inherits a farmhouse from her grandparents, and her mother takes a fortuitous offer to join William Cody's show as a scenery painter in order to earn the money to restore the farm. Her mother has always told her that all Indians are bad, but when Miranda gets to know some of the Lakota Sioux who take part in the show (particularly three children close to her own age), she begins to doubt her mother's assertion. Displeased with Miranda's new friendships, her mother grows even angrier when she learns that Sitting Bull is soon to join the company. Whelan uses an accessible first-person narrative and polished, easy prose filled with behind-the-scenes details ("There was a flourish in all he did, like the curlicues people put into their writing," Miranda says of Buffalo Bill) to evoke the feel of Cody's Wild West show. An appearance by Annie Oakley and other details fill in the historical context, but the novel skimps on character development, and the plotting often seems contrived to deliver the feel-good message. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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