American Indian Growing-Up Stories: Fact and Fiction
Explore authentic American Indian growing-up stories with this curated book list—featuring powerful juvenile fiction and nonfiction by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Michael Dorris, and more. From contemporary tales like *Rain Is Not My Indian Name* and *Indian Shoes* to classic narratives such as *A Yellow Raft in Blue Water*, discover compelling reads about Native identity, family, resilience, and coming of age. Perfect for educators, young readers, and anyone seeking diverse, fact-based and fictional Native American experiences.
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Rain Is Not My Indian Name
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
The next day was my fourteenth birthday, and I'd never kissed a boy -- domestic style or French. Right then, I decided to get myself a teen life. Cassidy Rain Berghoff didn't know that the very night she decided to get a life would be the night that Galen would lose his. It's been six months since her best friend died, and up until now Rain has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around her aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again -- at least through the lens of her canera. Hired by her town newspaper to photograph the campers, Rain soon finds that she has to decide how involved She wants to become in Indian Camp. Does she want to keep a professional distance from the intertribal community she belongs to? And just how willing is she to connect with the campers after her great loss? In a voice that resonates with insight and humor, Cynthia Leitich Smith tells of heartbreak, recovery, and reclaiming one's place in the world.
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Good for Nothing
by Michel Noël
The year is 1959, and 15-year-old Nipishish is kicked out of residential school, told by the principal that he's a good-for-nothing who, like all Indians, can look forward to a life of drunkenness, prison, and despair. Nipishish returns to the Métis reserve in northern Quebec where he was born, but feels even more isolated. His parents are dead and he is faced with the hopelessness of life on the reserve. He hopes for a fresh start when reserve officials give him the chance to live with a white family in an unfamiliar town. Despite a few bright spots, the adjustment and indignities in the city are too much to bear. Just when it seems that he will fulfill the predictions of the residential school principal, a girl named Pinamen and friends help bring him back to the reserve. Adolescents will find inspiration in Nipishish's courage to reclaim his identity and claim his rightful place on the reserve. The book also provides great insight into the roots of many ongoing native issues.
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The Girl with a Baby
by Sylvia Olsen
Because of baby Destiny, Jane dares to demand the best, not just of herself, but of her whole family, while holding on to her Aboriginal heritage and heading into the future.
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My Name is Seepeetza
by Shirley Sterling
Seepeetza must leave her family's ranch and go live at the Indian residential school, where she is forced to deny her native heritage
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A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
by Michael Dorris
Moving backward in time, Dorris's critically acclaimed debut novel is a lyrical saga of three generations of Native American women beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets.
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The Window
by Michael Dorris
When ten-year-old Rayona's Native American mother enters a treatment facility, her estranged father, a Black man, finally introduces her to his side of the family, who are not at all what she expected.
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The Secret of Dead Man's Mine
by Rodney Johnson
Rinnah Two Feathers, a sleuth-minded Lakota Indian in South Dakota, investigates a mysterious stranger poking around a long-abandoned house and stumbles across the secret of Dead Man's Mine.
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The Curse of the Royal Ruby
by Rodney Johnson
Lakota teenager Rinnah Two Feathers returns to investigate a bejeweled foreigner's murder and the disappearance of a priceless ruby.
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Skeleton Man
by Joseph Bruchac
Ever since the morning Molly woke up to find that her parents hadvanished, her life has become filled with terrible questions. Where have her parents gone? Who is this spooky old man who's taken her to live with him, claiming to be her great-uncle? Why does he never eat, and why does he lock her in her room at night? What are her dreams of the Skeleton Man trying to tell her? There's one thing Molly does know. She needs to find some answers before it's too late.
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Bowman's Store
by Joseph Bruchac
The author shares in this memoir how he came to fully understand, and eventually claim, his Native American heritage, despite his grandparents' unspoken pact to never discuss Grandpa's Abenaki blood. Photos.
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Completing the Circle
by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
Renowned author Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve here tells her own story and the story of her family. Also an expert quilter, she recalls her grandmother, Flora Driving Hawk, who taught her how storytelling enthralls and how a quilt can represent all that holds a family together. Completing the Circle demonstrates the same patience and attention to detail that Sneve lavishes on her quiltmaking. A quilt should be handed down for generations as a visible sign of love and tradition; this book has the same goal. It includes stories told by and about Flora Driving Hawk, about Sneve's great-grandmother, Hannah Howe Frazier, and about still elder ancestors, Maggie Frazier, Pejutaokawin the medicine woman, and the extraordinary Hazzodowin.
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Indian Shoes
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
What do Indian shoes look like, anyway? Like beautiful beaded moccasins...or hightops with bright orange shoelaces? Ray Halfmoon prefers hightops, but he gladly trades them for a nice pair of moccasins for his Grampa. After all, it's Grampa Halfmoon who's always there to help Ray get in and out of scrapes -- like the time they are forced to get creative after a homemade haircut makes Ray's head look like a lawn-mowing accident. This collection of interrelated stories is heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny. Cynthia Leitich Smith writes with wit and candor about what it's like to grow up as a Seminole-Cherokee boy who is just as happy pounding the pavement in windy Chicago as rowing on a take in rural Oklahoma.
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Jingle Dancer
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Jenna, a contemporary Muscogee (Creek) girl in Oklahoma, wants to honor a family tradition by jingle dancing at the next powwow. But where will she find enough jingles for her dress? An unusual, warm family story, beautifully evoked in Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu's watercolor art. Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies 2001, National Council for SS & Child. Book Council
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Green Snake Ceremony
by Sherrin Watkins
As a young girl and her grandfather try to find the right kind of snake for a special Shawnee ceremony, illustrations show what a nearby green snake thinks about everything.
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Lessons from Mother Earth
by Elaine McLeod
Tess's grandmother introduces her to nature's garden.
