The Lost Ones (Hidden Histories) - Hardcover

MacColl, Michaela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1620916258 ISBN 13: 9781620916254

Publisher: Calkins Creek, 2016

Synopsis

Despite her father's warnings that their tribe is always in danger, Casita, a ten-year-old Lipan Apache girl, has led a relatively peaceful life with her tribe in Mexico, doing her daily chores and practicing for her upcoming Changing Woman ceremony, in which she will officially become a woman of the tribe. But the peace is shattered when the U.S. Cavalry invades and brutally slaughters her people. Casita and her younger brother survive the attack, but are taken captive and sent to the Carlisle Indian School, a Pennsylvania boarding school that specializes in assimilating Native Americans into white American culture. Casita grieves for her lost family as she struggles to find a way to maintain her identity as a Lipan Apache and survive at the school. Includes author's note and bibliography.

About this title

About the Author

Michaela MacColl is the award-winning writer of several historical fiction novels, including Always Emily, Nobody's Secret, Prisoners in the Palace, and Promise the Night, and the co-author of Rory's Promise and Freedom's Price. She has degrees in multidisciplinary history from Vassar College and Yale University. She and her family live in Westport, Connecticut. michaelamaccoll.com

From School Library Journal

Gr 4–7—The real-life drama of 12-year-old Casita and her younger brother Jack is the premise of this historical fiction novel about Lipan Apache children adapting to life at the Carlisle Indian School. It opens with a gratuitously graphic raid by the U.S. calvary on the young protagonist's village, during which her mother is murdered. The incident is reminiscent of a similar scene from the Newbery Award-winning book Matchlock Gun (1938), in which American Indians attack white settlers. Unfortunately, the author's descriptions of the two main Native children often borrow heavily from stereotypical depictions from that same era. The captured children are transported east to live on a military base in the care of a childless Quaker woman and her lieutenant officer husband. The couple accept the responsibility of "civilizing" Casita and Jack. The narrative consistently uses phrases that imbue the children with animal-like qualities. Further playing into troublesome stereotypes about Native people, the terms fierce and warrior are used to describe Jack, a little boy who is about eight years old. Also disturbing is Jack's elation at being called a "mascot." Though the author consulted with Native readers, she nevertheless projects a nonindigenous point of view, manifested most obviously in how the children think and why they react as they do in certain situations. VERDICT The complexities of Native cultures and the realities of the history of residential schools deserve to be addressed by someone with a deep and suitable knowledge of Apache culture. Not recommended.—Naomi Caldwell, Alabama State University, Montgomery

Edition details

• Publisher: Calkins Creek
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1620916258
• ISBN 13: 9781620916254
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256