As Long as the Rivers Flow

Tells the story of the author's childhood as a Cree Indian, as he and his siblings were taken from their parents and forced into a boarding school to learn the ways of the Europeans, in an effort to rid young children of their culture.

Grade 3-6-Given the appearance in recent years of books about Indian boarding schools, both fiction and nonfiction, this title offers an important perspective on the issue. Loyie shares a quiet but powerful first-person account of his last summer before he and his siblings were taken away from their family. Most of the story focuses on what was otherwise a normal seasonal routine for the Cree people of that era, with the family moving from their main cabin to their summer "camp" for a few weeks. Apart from the foreshadowed separation, this particular spring-summer progression was enlivened by the opportunity for the children to care for an orphaned baby owl, and an encounter with one of the biggest grizzly bears ever shot in North America. All of the day-to-day detail, close family bonding, and unexpected adventure draw readers comfortably into 10-year-old Lawrence's experience so that the final pages are all the more painful. When the children learn that they must go to the residential school or their parents will be imprisoned, and they are physically loaded onto the back of a truck by strangers, the sense of separation and loss is keenly felt. Holmlund's realistic and detailed watercolors expertly illuminate events throughout the story, in vignettes, plates, and a few full-page pictures. The epilogue briefly summarizes the facts about boarding schools in general, highlighting Lawrence's own experience, and includes several black-and-white photos.
Sean George, Memphis-Shelby County Public Library & Information Center, Memphis, TN
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 3-6. Loyie remembers himself at 10 years old, happy at home with his large extended Cree family in northern Alberta, Canada. With his father, he cares for an abandoned baby owl. On a camping trip with his grandma, he faces a grizzly bear that suddenly rears up before them on the trail. He learns patience and discipline, and he earns the name Oskiniko, Young Man. But always in the background of this idyllic coming-of-age account is the looming threat of separation, the nightmare the adults are whispering about. At the end of the book, the children must go to boarding school or their parents will be put in prison. "Strange white men" lift the terrified children onto a truck and drive away. Loyie's quiet words and Holmlund's authentic watercolor art capture the happy wilderness home without paint-and-feathers pageantry. But readers will want to know much more about the school experience and about the story behind the black-and-white photos that are crowded into the short epilogue. What happened to Loyie in those years at the school? We need a second book. Hazel Rochman
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