Buffalo: With Selections from Native American Song-Poems (ASPCA Henry Bergh Children's Book Awards (Awards))

A compilation of Native-American song-poems interwoven with narrative histories collected from multiple tribes is illuminated with vivid paintings and monoprints to celebrate the buffalo's once vital and sacred role on the American Great Plains.

Grade 5-8-More like a gallery catalog than a children's book, this title serves mostly to exhibit Brodsky's paintings, none of which are likely to hold much appeal for young people. Facing each full-page abstract or impressionistic watercolor, oil, charcoal, or gouache painting is a paragraph of text (dry, and in tiny print) about Native Americans and buffalo, and one transcribed and cited Native American song about these creatures. While the historical relationship of Native Americans with the buffalo is explored in an esoteric, scholarly manner, the focus here is the art. Students will find Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith's Buffalo Days (1997), Russell Freedman's Buffalo Hunt (1988, both Holiday), and Ken Robbins's Thunder on the Plains (Atheneum, 2001) more informative, more understandable, and more satisfying.
Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
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