Paperback, 244 pages
English language
Published June 3, 2002 by Hyperion.
[In this] story of a young Ojibwa girl, Omakayas, living on an island in Lake Superior around 1847, Louise Erdrich is reversing the narrative perspective used in most children's stories about nineteenth-century Native Americans. Instead of looking out at 'them' as dangers or curiosities, Erdrich, drawing on her family's history, wants to tell about 'us', from the inside. The Birchbark House establishes its own ground, in the vicinity of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' books. --The New York Times Book Review
I loved the characters and the exploration of a time and place I knew relatively little about. It was something of a homework book for me, though, as I try to add more historical fiction to my repertoire, so at times it felt like more of a slog than most of what I read.
