The Game of Silence
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4.1 • 24 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Game of Silence is the second novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.
Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. One day in 1850, Omakayas’s island is visited by a group of mysterious people. From them, she learns that the chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island and move farther west.
That day, Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, could be in danger: Her way of life. Her home.
The Birchbark House Series is the story of one Ojibwe family’s journey through one hundred years in America. The New York Times Book Review raved about The Game of Silence: “Erdrich has created a world, fictional but real: absorbing, funny, serious and convincingly human.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sequel to The Birchbark House continues the saga of Omakayas, now "nine winters old," a member of the Ojibwe tribe who reside on an island in Lake Superior. The tranquility of the little village is threatened when word arrives that white leaders are going to force Omakayas's people farther west into enemy territory. While some men from the tribe including Omakayas's father and Fishtail, her sister's special friend travel in different directions to investigate the rumor, the rest of the villagers remain. They struggle to regain normalcy by returning to their routine of hunting, fishing, weaving and gathering. Erdrich once again shows what is was like to grow up Native American during the same time period about which Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote. The unadorned narrative, sprinkled with ancient legends, clearly expresses not only the traditions and rituals of the Ojibwe but also their values and religious beliefs. Erdrich's pencil drawings (somewhat reminiscent of the style of Garth Williams's illustrations for the Little House series) capture the mood and spirit of such characters as Pinch, Omakayas's mischievous little brother and noble Old Tallow, who gives Omakayas a precious gift. Like its prequel, this meticulously researched novel offers an even balance of joyful and sorrowful moments while conveying a perspective of America's past that is rarely found in history books. Ages 8-12.
