Bibliographic Info
The Birchbark House
by Louise Erdrich
(Harper, 1999)
Set Info
Set contains 12 copies.
Book Summary
Omakakiins and her family live on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Though there are growing numbers of gichi-mookomaanag, white people, encroaching, life continues much as it always has. Every summer they build a new birchbark house. Every fall they go to ricing camp to harvest and feast. They move to the cedar log house before the first snows arrive, and they celebrate the end of the long, cold winters at spring maple-sugaring camp. In between, Omakakiins fights with her annoying little brother, Pinch; plays with the adorable baby, Niiwo; and tries to be grown up like her big sister, Angeline.
But the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever -- but that will eventuyally lead Omakakiins to discover her calling.
By turns moving and funny, The Birchbark House is a breathaking story from the acclaimed Louise Erdrich and is the first book in the celebrated series about one Ojibwe family's journey through a hundred years of American history.