Children of the Longhouse

While making my Pathfinder for my internship at the children's library I recently read "Children of the Longhouse" by Joseph Bruchac for the first time. For a "children's" novel it was pretty good.

It's the story of twins Otsi:stia and Ohkwa'ri (brother and sister respectively) who live in a Mohwak village in eastern New York. Though the underlying story is one of a bully going after Otsi:stia because he tells the village Otsi:stia tells the village of a conversation he overhears where the bully (Grabber) is planning on raiding a nearby village in order to gain some "prestige" in the Mohawk village and undoubtly creating an unnecessary war. Through this Bruchac interweaves traditional Mohawk tales, as the children deal with their decisions they are reminded of tales that their family has told them and they refer to them. It's really a pretty good read for grades 3-5 and highlights many interesting facts of local Mohawk culture.

I thoroughly enjoyed how you are shown how the people went about their daily lives and it isn't "this is what Ohkwa'ri did because she is a girl and her day is different than Otsi:Stia." Ohkaw'ra considers the plants as she is picking strawberries and thinks about their uses in medicine, or Ohkwa'ri decides to go out and bulid his own shelter away from his mother in order to get used to be away from his family (men left their "mother's hearths" and lived with their wives because Mohawk and other people of the Iroquois Nation trace their decendence through their mother's). Through this experience he is exposed to Grabber and his friends as they try and get back at him as well as going through the process of growing up by having to create his own shelter, find his own food, etc.

The book culminates in a huge game of lacrosse that was the only part of the book I did not enjoy. The lacrosse game is a bit too short and although it is necessary for the culmination of the book and the ending of the story with Grabber and his issues with Otsi:Stia, it's the only place I felt that the author fell short in his writing. The lead up was a bit better than the actual game. Other than that, though, I would say this would be an excellent book to use in a classroom in order to teach children not only a story about local Native Americans, but how they lived their lives and how the stories that they were told helped them make decisions and view their daily lives.